You going somewhere with this, Spider, or can we just take it as read that you’re a bit cranky today? - K. A. Bedford

It was hard to just sit and relax. Everyone he saw somehow looked suspicious, especially all those people who appeared perfectly innocuous: nobody who looked that innocuous could be anything but guilty, Spider thought.

He’d lived with a mad sculptress for long enough that he knew (believed, really) that much of what passed for art these days was bullshit, all naked emperors and nobody commenting on it. In any case, as soon as he registered, “ah, sculpture”, he lost interest and looked away.

Maybe he was crazy, he thought. It would explain everything. Insanity was good that way.