"...like a descendant or something weirder?"

"A descendant. I mean. We think so. I think."

"Okay, I'm gonna call him Junior for conjuration purposes. When did you find him?"

"Couple years ago, couldn't tell you the day."

"Can you narrow it down like at all, I don't want to drown us in models."

"I can call the Shadow - parents aren't a conjurable parameter or this is still trying to pin down who the kid is?"

"I can conjure the parents, I thought you wanted something more like geographical provenance - who's the Shadow, anyway?"

"The leader of the Underground. More than that is supposed to be secret but..." He makes a face. "He wrote that book about Mar."

"Good for him." Tiny model parents of Junior.

A tall bald man and a green-haired brown-skinned woman.

"That's impossible. - That's Damas, the one Praxis deposed. He's been dead a lot longer than this kid has been alive."

"...could it just be a weird lookalike?"

"It could be. Can you check?"

"In a sort of roundabout fashion, sure... how old is Junior?"

"Maybe four."

Scale model of Mr. Damas five years ago, with surroundings?

Leaning on a parked car, either talking or laughing, gesturing. The person next to him, a dark-skinned man with "life" tattooed around his arm, is reacting with mock anger.

"This is Damas five years back."

"...So he abandoned us. Guess I can't blame him. - I need to talk to the Shadow about this." He shakes his head. "In the mean time, you wanted more reason to believe the baron is bad news. For a first pass, you can get it by listening to whatever the propaganda is today - even he can't make himself sound good. And I can name some laws he came up with. That'll only scratch the surface but it's what I've got that's already public."

"What do I wanna grab to read up on that?"

He can name laws, mostly by numbers but sometimes by nicknames. "The propaganda plays on the loudspeakers with the red holograms all day every day. I don't know if there's a file of all the soundbites for today and if there was I'd ask you to listen to it somewhere I don't have to hear it."

Cam'll start with the laws then.

This one makes leaving the city without permission a capital offense. This one declares a state of emergency and indefinitely suspends council elections, something similar to habeas corpus, funding for public television, and the right not to be subjected to torture without having been convicted of a crime. This one authorizes the exile of families that don't adequately support the city, such as by having members in the Krimzon Guard or donating eco. This one ends all funding for the publicly run orphanage and grants all its assets to the Ministry of Extreme Labor. This one declares that neither the city nor Mar Memorial Stadium is liable for any injuries or deaths that may occur during sporting events.

...and the author of these things is definitely the Baron they're talking about?

He doesn't seem to have written the one about the orphanage and he isn't the sole author of the one about exile or the one declaring a state of emergency.

That leaves plenty to spare. "Yeah, okay, what did you want on this malevolent despot again?"