“Oh, oh yes that’s her,” Mr. Geary said. He cried. “That’s her, yes, that’s my daughter,” as if we were asking formal identification of him, which we were not. They had wanted to see her. I nodded as if that were helpful to us and glanced at Hamzinic, who replaced the sheet and made himself busy as we led Mahalia’s parents away.

“I DO WANT TO, to go  to Ul Qoma,” Mr. Geary said. I was used to hearing that little stress on the verb from foreigners: he felt strange using it. “I’m sorry, I know it’s probably going to be … to be hard to organise but, I want to see, where she …”

“Of course,” I said.

“Of course,” Corwi said. She was keeping up with a reasonable amount of the English, and spoke occasionally. We were eating lunch with the Gearys at the Queen Czezille, a comfortable enough hotel with which the Besź Police had a long-standing arrangement. Its staff were experienced in providing the chaperoning, almost surreptitious imprisonment, that unqualified visitors required.

James Thacker, some middle-ranking twenty-eight-or –nine-year-old at the US embassy, had joined us. He spoke occasionally to Corwi in excellent Besź. The dining room looked out at the northern tip of Hustav Isle. Riverboats went by (in both cities). The Gearys picked at their peppercorned fish.

“We suspected that you might like to visit your daughter’s place of work,” I said. “We’ve been in discussion with Mr. Thacker and his counterparts in Ul Qoma for the paperwork to get you through Copula Hall. A day or two I think is all.” Not an embassy, in Ul Qoma, of course: a sulky US Interests section.

“And … you said that this is, this is for the Breach now?” Mrs. Geary said. “You said it won’t be the Ul Qomans investigating it but it’ll be with this Breach, yes?” She stared at me with tremendous mistrust. “So when do we talk to them?”

I glanced at Thacker. “That will not happen,” I said. “The Breach is not like us.”

Mrs. Geary stared at me. “‘Us’ the … the policzai ?” she said.

I had meant the “us” to include her. “Well, among other things, yes. It… they aren’t like the police in Besźel or in Ul Qoma.”

“I don’t—”

“Inspector Borlú, I’ll be happy to explain this,” Thacker said. He hesitated. He wanted me to go. Any explanation carried out in my presence would have to be moderately polite: alone with other Americans he could stress to them how ridiculous and difficult these cities were, how sorry he and his colleagues were for the added complications of a crime occurring in Besźel, and so on. He could insinuate. It was an embarrassment, an antagonism to have to deal with a dissident force like Breach.

“I don’t know how much you know about Breach, Mr. and Mrs. Geary, but it is … it isn’t like other powers. You have some sense of its… capabilities? The Breach is … It has unique powers. And it’s, ah, extremely secretive. We, the embassy, have no contacts with … any representative of Breach. I do realise how strange that must sound, but… I can assure you Breach’s record in the prosecution of criminals is, ah, ferocious. Impressive. We will receive word of its progress and of whatever action it takes against whoever it finds responsible.”

“Does that mean …?” Mr. Geary said. “They have the death penalty here, right?”

“And in Ul Qoma?” his wife said.

“Sure,” Thacker said. “But that’s not really at issue. Mr. and Mrs. Geary, our friends in Besźel and the Ul Qoma authorities are about to invoke Breach  to deal with your daughter’s murder, so Besź laws and Ul Qoman laws are kind of irrelevant. The, ah, sanctions available to Breach are pretty limitless.”

“Invoke?” said Mrs. Geary.

“There are protocols,” I said. “To be followed. Before Breach’ll manifest to take care of this.”

Mr. Geary: “What about the trial?”

“That will be in camera,”  I said. “Breach … tribunals,” I had tried out decisions  and actions  in my head, “are secret.”

“We won’t testify? We won’t see?” Mr. Geary was aghast. This must all have been explained previously, but you know. Mrs. Geary was shaking her head in anger, but without her husband’s surprise.

“I’m afraid not,” Thacker said. “It is a unique situation here. I can pretty much guarantee you, though, that whoever did this will not only be caught but, be, ah, brought to pretty severe justice.” One could almost pity Mahalia Geary’s killer. I did not.

“But that’s—”

“I know, Mrs. Geary, I’m truly sorry. There are no other posts like this in the service. Ul Qoma and Besźel and Breach … These are unique circumstances.”

“Oh, God. You know, it’s… it’s all, this is all the stuff Mahalia was into,” Mr. Geary said. “The city, the city, the other city. Besźel”—Bezzel , he said it—“and Ul Qoma. And or seen it.” I didn’t understand that.

“Or seen  ee,” Mrs. Geary said. I looked up. “It’s not Orsinnit, it’s Orciny, honey.”

Thacker pouted polite incomprehension and shook his head in question.

“What’s that, Mrs. Geary?” I said. She fiddled with her bag. Corwi quietly took out a notebook.

“This is all this stuff Mahalia was into,” Mrs. Geary said. “It’s what she was studying. She was going to be a doctor of it.” Mr. Geary grimace-smiled, indulgent, proud, bewildered. “She was doing real well. She told us a little bit about it. It sounds like that Orciny was like the Breach.”

“Ever since she first came here,” Mr. Geary said. “This is the stuff she wanted to do.”

“That’s right, she came here first. I mean … here, this, Besźel, right? She came here first, but then she said she needed to go to Ul Qoma. I’m going to be honest with you, Inspector, I thought it was kind of the same place. I know that was wrong. She had to get special permission to go there, but because she’s, was, a student, that’s where she stayed to do all her work.”

“Orciny … it’s a sort of folk tale,” I told Thacker. Mahalia’s mother nodded; her father looked away. “It is not so really like the Breach, Mrs. Geary. Breach is real. A power. But Orciny is …” I hesitated.

“The third city,” Corwi said in Besź to Thacker, who still furrowed his face. When he showed no comprehension, she said, “A secret. Fairy tale. Between the other two.” He shook his head and looked, uninterestedly, Oh .

“She loved this place,” Mrs. Geary said. She looked longing. “I mean, sorry, I mean Ul Qoma. Are we near where she lived?” Crudely physically, grosstopically, to use the term unique to Besźel and Ul Qoma, unnecessary anywhere else, yes we were. Neither Corwi nor I answered, as it was a complicated question. “She’d been studying it all for years, since she first read some book about the cities. Her professors always seemed to think she was doing excellent in her work.”

“Did you like her professors?” I said.

“Oh, I never met them. But she showed me some of what they were doing; she showed me a website for the program, and the place she worked.”

“This is Professor Nancy?”

“That was her advisor, yes. Mahalia liked her.”

“They worked well together?” Corwi was watching me as I asked.

“Oh, I don’t know.” Mrs. Geary even laughed. “Mahalia seemed to argue with her all the time. Seemed they didn’t agree on much, but when I said, ‘Well how does that work?’ she told me it was okay. She said they liked disagreeing. Mahalia said she learned more that way.”

“Did you keep up with your daughter’s work?” I said. “Read her essays? She told you about her Ul Qoman friends?” Corwi moved in her seat. Mrs. Geary shook her head.

“Oh no,” she said.

“Inspector,” said Thacker.

“The stuff she did just wasn’t the sort of thing that I could … that I was real interested in, Mr. Borlú. I mean since she’d been over here, sure, stories in the paper about Ul Qoma would catch our eye a bit more than they had before, and sure I’d read them. But so long as Mahalia was happy, I … we were happy. Happy for her to get on with her thing, you know.”