Thales and Jann both fell silent, the confession booth filled only with the sound of two different sets of breaths.
"She left."
Jann's voice came from the darkness.
"I know," Thales responded gloomily.
Several more seconds passed before Jann spoke again:
"Now, can we set aside our biases and talk this through properly?"
Thales took a deep breath, adjusted his mood, and nodded:
"So, you didn't kill Morse, you just knew of his death in advance and then kept it hidden?"
"If I really wanted to kill that wine merchant, I would have let him go first and then given him a discounted ticket for a sea-crossing ship," Jann snorted coldly, "Not even Judge Brennan could have gotten involved."
Thales was silent for a while, sighing with complex emotions:
"Before entering the city on the first day, I told Morse: if he was unwilling, he didn't have to do it. I could have found an excuse to drive him away, and none of this—dying unclearly in jail—would have happened."
