He goes out the window and calls mental health nuisances anonymously and goes to the office anyway.

Most ambassadorships to unimportant places are rewarded to uninspiring children of good families; his coworkers mostly don't show up except for diplomatic events and let their secretaries do things. But no one bothers him.

That suits him fine.

In the absence of pressing emergencies the political will for a subsidy to clean the rest of the reds and transition away from having them entirely can be painstakingly recollected.

Shasali has enough seniority now that she can pick some of her cases. Yellow doesn't specialize as strongly as purple - she can take murder cases without anyone thinking she's a yellow capital crimes judge or anything - or she can continue to pick the unpopular dense tax and regulatory cases.

Kan comes over for dinner to see his cousin and tells her to pick up a particular case number.

"...all right. Why?"

"Touches someone I need a favor from."

"Do you need me attentive to anything about it in particular -"

"I assume once it's assigned he'll get in touch, in which case you can just tell him that you think the appropriation for decontamination subsidies will pay itself back quite quickly. If he doesn't get in touch - and it's possible he won't - then by all means just issue a judgment."

She nods. She collects the case onto her schedule.

Her secretary lets her know she's gotten a phone call from the director of the budget committee's secretary. 

She takes the call. "Shasali Aven."

"Please hold for Aleva Neli," the secretary says. 

There's several minutes' wait.

She can answer two emails and organize the morning's baby pictures in that time.

"Shasali Aven," says a man's voice when he finally gets on the line. He sounds distinctly annoyed. "You have 41121. Drop it, I'll consider it a personal favor."

"If you'll give me one moment I can look that one up," she says. She has it pulled up already.

Investment banking scheme. Outlandishly complicated but the short version seems to be that a lot of money was relied on and turned out not to exist. A capital case, since the losses are in excess of one million ni.

He makes vaguely impatient breathing noises.

"That's four-one-one-two-one, with the investment bank?" she clarifies.

"There you go, thank you."

"It looks complicated but I'll certainly take your suggestion under advisement."

"If you're having a hard time understanding it I can ask to have it reassigned."

"Is there anything in particular you'd like to draw my attention to here -"

"Oh, he's guilty. It's like gambling, you know, some people just have an addict's personality and they keep thinking it's all coming together. But the kids are one and two and the wife's grey and blind. You could kick it down to a misdemeanor violation of the reporting requirements, strip everything they've got and pay the losers back, it's good enough."

"I'll write that down, thank you." Type type. "May I ask your interest in the case -"

"I know the family from work."