An Asymptotic Approach

“You might want to review your contract,” Aventurine said, with an easy smugness that evoked pure Schadenfreude. “Funny little thing called a spontaneous travel contingency clause. Up to 80 hours of on-site consulting—paid, of course—if the asset liquidation specialist deems it economically valuable.”

When the IPC’s newest Stoneheart drags Ratio along on a debt case seemingly for no reason other than his own amusement, Ratio wastes no time adding Aventurine to the list of people he’d strangle if it wouldn’t jeopardize his career. Upon their arrival on Xin-41, however, Ratio begrudgingly deems his contempt for the planet’s intellectual oligarchy stronger than his contempt for his insufferable colleague. Even more begrudgingly, he finds himself drawn in by the web of mysteries lurking not just within the Slinkans’ ivory tower, but within the depths of Aventurine’s dangerously inscrutable mind.Through deadly equations, volatile spices, and the ‘warning’ of a brutalized corpse left out under the summer sun, Xin-41’s insolvency reveals itself as something deeply sinister, with threads tying back to the early days of the IPC... and to one of the Intelligentsia Guild’s most infamous scholars.