Agent Kale had endured better mornings. She stood in the drizzle before the
Ministry of Roots, her dark leaves flattened against her stem by the persistent rain, and
studied a recruitment poster that declared, in letters of Republican green: YOUR
REPUBLIC NEEDETH THEE — SERVE WITH FIBRE AND HONOUR.
She possessed fibre in abundance. Honour, she had decided, was a thing that had to
be earned anew each morning, and this particular morning was not cooperating.
She had been recalled from her previous assignment in the Orchard Borderlands
under circumstances that had not yet been explained to her satisfaction. The telegram had
been terse even by the standards of a service whose communications were legendarily
brief: RETURN IMMEDIATELY. ACCORD. DO NOT STOP FOR ANYTHING,
INCLUDING SLEEP.
She had stopped for one cup of tea. She considered this an act of patriotism. A
depleted agent served no one.
Within the Ministry, the air smelled of damp soil and yesterday's decisions. The
building itself was ancient — a baroque edifice of compressed root vegetables, its corridors
narrow and lit by strings of bioluminescent microgreens that gave everything the quality of
being seen through someone else's memory. She passed agents she recognised from
training, agents she had worked beside, agents who had retired and, judging by their
presence, un-retired. The scale of whatever was happening had drawn everyone back to
centre.
That alone told her more than the telegram had.
Behind a desk fortified with files sat Director Broccoli, her distinguished florets
arranged in what she evidently considered a commanding posture. Behind the Director,
through a window of reinforced glass, the Republic's capital stretched to the horizon in
every shade of green the world contained.
DIRECTOR BROCCOLI: "Kale. Thou art late. And thou art dripping upon my
floor."
AGENT KALE: "The rain, Director, doth not distinguish betwixt vegetables."
DIRECTOR BROCCOLI: "Sit thee down. We have a situation. Catastrophic.
War-summoning. Civilisation-ending. The customary variety, in truth. The
Refrigerator Accord hath been stolen."
Kale sat. The chair was a retired beetroot, still stained from eleven years of service.
She had heard the rumours for two days — hissed betwixt Brussels sprouts in corridors,
murmured by leeks near the water fountain, carried in the anxious silence of those who
knew precisely what the Accord's absence signified.
AGENT KALE: "When?"
DIRECTOR BROCCOLI: "Three nights past. The vault in the Neutral Pantry's
Archive Tower was opened without a single alarm given. Not one cry, not one bell.
Whosoever did this knew the building as well as our own agents."
AGENT KALE: "An inside hand?"
DIRECTOR BROCCOLI: "Or an outsider very well briefed. Two suspects thus
far. Mango — a Fruit Kingdom intelligence operative of considerable renown,
skilled in persuasion and in knife-work of the spectacular sort. And Captain
Cornflake of the Cereal Confederation, who hath motive, means, and an unsettling
appetite for disorder."
Kale studied the dossier likenesses. Mango was, she noted with professional
detachment, extraordinarily handsome — warm gold of skin, artfully curved, and wearing
an expression that suggested he was well aware of the fact. Cornflake looked precisely what
he was: a hardened officer who had survived seventeen milk-soakings and emerged from
each one rather more resolute than before.
But it was the third photograph that gave her pause. It was not in the dossier. It had
been slipped beneath the front cover, loose, as if placed there by a hand that did not wish
to make the inclusion official. The image showed a figure she did not recognise — smooth,
green-gold, of indeterminate allegiance. Beneath it, in writing she recognised as Broccoli's
own hand, a single word: WATCH.
AGENT KALE: "Who is this?"
A pause fell. Director Broccoli looked, for a moment, like someone deciding how
much of the truth to unpack from the larger container of the whole truth.
DIRECTOR BROCCOLI: "A person of interest. Not yet confirmed. Not yet
discussable. Consider it a background note."
AGENT KALE: "Director, thou hast never in eleven years provided a background
note. Everything thou givest me hath a reason and a weight. Who is this?"
DIRECTOR BROCCOLI: "Thou departest for the Neutral Pantry at dawn. Thine
contact there is Whole Milk. The longest-serving neutral operative in all of Grovia.
Trustworthy enough. Probably."
AGENT KALE: "Thou dost not sound entirely persuaded."
DIRECTOR BROCCOLI: "I am never fully persuaded of anything, Kale. It is
why I have survived so long. There is one additional briefing note I am compelled
to give thee, though it doth not appear in any official document."
Kale waited. Broccoli moved to the window, her broad back to the room.
DIRECTOR BROCCOLI: "There hath been a death. Archivist Fennel — the
second archivist, a junior position, not in any briefing — was found this morning.
Third shelf. Sub-level of the Archive Tower. He had been there since the night of the
theft. No one noticed because the Tower was sealed after the theft was discovered,
and the sub-level is not in the official floor plans."
AGENT KALE: "He was murdered."
DIRECTOR BROCCOLI: "The Pantry Authority hath not yet used that word. I
am using it now, privately, so that thou art not surprised when thou findest what
thou wilt find. The theft and the murder are connected. They are both pieces of
something larger. Do not let the theft distract thee from the body. The body is the
key."
She tucked the photograph into her inside pocket.
The train to the Neutral Pantry ran upon tracks of pressed pasta — the work of the
Grain Infrastructure Authority, one of the few organisations both nations cooperated to maintain without complaint. Kale sat alone in her compartment, reviewing documents by
the pale glow of a bioluminescent radish lantern.
Eleven years she had served. She had cracked the Case of the Poisoned Pesto,
dismantled the Expired Yogurt Ring, and once spent six weeks undercover as a head of
iceberg lettuce — the most psychologically taxing commission of her career, she often
reflected, chiefly because nobody had noticed she was not, in fact, iceberg. She had also, in
her seventh year, been the sole agent assigned to investigate what became known internally
as the Marmalade Affair — a case she had closed with a sealed report that even she was no
longer authorised to fully read.
This felt weightier. She pressed her brow against the cold glass and watched the
highlands blur past in shades of amber and gold. Beautiful, she conceded privately. Even if
it were full of people attempting to ruin her.
And then, in the window's dark reflection, she saw it: a face in the corridor glass.
There for a breath and then gone. Smooth, green-gold. Watching.
She was on her feet before the thought completed itself, into the corridor, scanning
its length. Empty. Or seemingly so. She returned to her seat and placed her hand upon the
photograph. WATCH, the Director had written. Kale was beginning to think the instruction
was mutual.
And then, as she settled back into her seat, she noticed something she had missed
on the first pass: a folded note tucked beneath her cup, in no hand she recognised. She
unfolded it. Four words, in a formal script that seemed older than the paper it was written
on:
FIND FENNEL'S SECOND NOTEBOOK.
She turned the note over. Blank. She examined the cup. No fingerprints she could
read in this light. The note had been there when she boarded, or placed during the one
time she had stepped into the corridor. Someone on this train knew about Fennel's death
before she did. Someone wanted her looking in a specific direction from the very first hour
of her assignment.
Agent Kale had been on cases before where she suspected she was the instrument
rather than the investigator. She had always, eventually, managed to become both. She
folded the note into her pocket beside the photograph and looked out at the darkening
highlands with the expression of a person who had just decided something and was not yet
entirely sure what it was.