genuinely curious. “Too many,” he said. “Often, the problem is not coming up with solutions—it’s deciding which of them actually happened and which are pure fancy. Those men, for instance. They weren’t professionals.” He paused. “I’m sorry, that probably doesn’t make any sense.” “No, it does,” she said. “The way they kept itching to shoot the building up, they way their boss let himself be goaded into shooting Peterus…” “Exactly,” he said. “They had experience as thieves, certainly. But they weren’t refined at it.” “A simple way to determine the type of criminal is by whom they kill and when,” Marasi said, quoting a line from one of her textbooks. “Murders end with a hanging; thievery alone can mean escaping death. Those men, if they’d really known what they were doing, would have left quickly, glad they hadn’t needed to do any shooting.” “So they’re street toughs,” Waxillium said. “Common criminals.”