The Tainted Cup, page 11
The Talagray investigator—the tall, thin man—approached and bowed. “Ana,” he said. “It’s an honor to see you once more.”
“Tuwey Uhad!” Ana said cheerily, grinning like a sharkfish. “By Sanctum, it’s been years. Or decades, perhaps?”
“Just years,” said Uhad. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.” His face was gaunt, and he looked weary—he probably hadn’t slept in days—but he allowed a small smile. He was a reedy, gloomy fellow who looked more like an advocate who argued cases before the magistries of the Iudex than a soldier. But then, I realized, that was probably what most investigators actually looked like.
Uhad’s eyes fluttered slightly as he looked upon Ana: a trembling in his pupils, a twitching in his cheek. An engraver indeed, then. “Commander-Prificto Vashta sends her apologies,” he said. “She wished to be here, but she has been appointed seneschal of the canton. A grave formality—but a necessary one.”
I nodded, for I’d heard of this procedure. In the event of a breach, Talagray anointed one Legion officer as seneschal—essentially a dictator of all domestic matters—until the breach was resolved. This meant that the tall, exhausted-looking woman I’d met in Ana’s shack back in Daretana was now judge, jury, and executioner of the canton, and we now operated completely under her purview. If we saw her again, I reckoned, it’d be because things had either gone very right, or very wrong.
“Don’t let the size of the group here discourage you, Ana,” Uhad continued. “It’s far easier to keep a smaller force discreet.”
“I’ve no goddamned idea how big or small it is,” said Ana, grinning under her blindfold. “But I appreciate the notice.”
He gestured to the broad, grizzled man beside him, and said, “First—this is my assistant investigator, Captain Tazi Miljin.”
The broad man bowed deeply to us, but as he rose his eyes lingered on me. He looked every inch the soldier, his shoulders huge, his gray skin sun-darkened and puckered here and there with white scars. His thick white hair fell in a messy mop down to his ears. Nose broad and bent and broken. Beard cut in a manner that made it hard to tell if he was constantly frowning or not. From the look in his eyes, I suspected he was.
Most interesting was the sword at his side: it bore a plain crossguard, yet the handle and the scabbard were uniquely designed, locked together with some complex brass machinery, almost like the clock at the Legion’s Iyalet building back in Daretana. Its black leather scabbard was worn but carefully polished and cleaned. However strange the weapon looked, it seemed a beloved thing to him.
I glanced up, and saw he was still watching me. Gaze as cool as the underside of a river rock. No dancing to his pupils. I wondered what alterations he was sporting.
“We’re assisted here by representatives from the Apoths and Engineering, naturally,” said Uhad. “Immunis Vasiliki Kalista…”
A short woman stepped forward and bowed, donned in Engineering purple. She was Tala, like me, thickset and glamorous, with clever, dark eyes and her shiny black hair expertly tied up in an elegant bun. Glittering oysterdust applied to the undersides of her eyes, bronze and ceramic hairsticks winking from the bun on her head. Someone who lived to be seen first and see things second, I felt. “An honor to serve with you,” she said.
“And Immunis Itonia Nusis,” said Uhad, gesturing to the other. “From the Apoths…”
A small, neat, handsome Kurmini woman with short, curly black hair stepped up, pushed back her Apoth red coat with a flourish, and gave a pert bow. “An honor to serve with you, ma’am.” She popped up, grinning cheerily. Every piece of her felt cleaned and pressed flat, all angles so adjusted and sharp she felt like a quilt carefully put together piece by piece. Her skin was dark gray, but her eyelids were slightly purpled, the sign of significant grafts. This wasn’t unusual for Apoths: being masters at shaping flesh, many of them augmented their own. It was likely the woman could see in the dark better than a jungle cat.
I studied the three immuni, each proud and preening and draped in the colors and heralds of their Iyalets. I suddenly thought of them as birds: Uhad was a blue stork, tall, wavering, watchful, and still; Kalista was a purple courtesan dove, all glamour and gleaming plumage; and Nusis was a little red flicker-thrush, cheerily chirruping and darting from branch to branch. How ostentatious they seemed next to Ana, bent and blindfolded, yet coiled like a predator about to strike.
Ana tapped my chest with a knuckle. “This is Din. My assistant investigator.”
All eyes moved to me, then flicked up and down, taking in my height.
“He’s new,” said Ana, “and big, and I think he lost his sense of humor in some tragic accident. But he helped me solve the Blas issue quick enough.” Then, simply, “He is good.”
I bowed, but I recognized that, short as it was, that was the highest compliment Ana had paid me yet.
“Ordinarily I’d give you both time to rest and freshen up, Ana,” said Uhad, “but given the situation, I thought it’d be best to get to work.”
“Absolutely,” said Ana. She gripped my arm tight. “Lead the way.”
* * *
—
OUR DESTINATION WAS an old Iudex Magistry chamber, one that was normally used for arbitration but had been overtaken by Uhad’s investigation. The most striking thing was the sheer filth of the place: the piles of parchments on the big round table, the pots brimming with pipe ash. Every stitch of fabric stank of smoke and sweat and stale clar-tea. It was without a doubt a room people had been holed up in for several days, sleepless and stewing.
Uhad walked up to the round table, eyes fluttering, and plucked out a handful of parchments with his gloved hands—the engraver’s gift for remembering where you’d laid things. He stacked them up and placed them before Ana as I helped her into the one clear spot at the table, and she seized upon them like a starving hillcat upon a mouse.
“It goes without saying that all that we show you and all we discuss is of the highest secrecy,” Uhad said. “Any who share what we say or review outside of this room will be subject to punishment by the Imperial Legion as an actor of malicious discontent.” He gestured as the others settled into their chairs. “The rest of the crew has heard this, too, of course…”
Uhad’s place at the table, naturally, had no notes or papers, as it was all in his head. Nusis sat on his left, and Kalista on his right, and it was hard to think of two more different people: Nusis nodded pertly before her towers of papers, whereas Kalista lounged and smoked her pipe as she dug through her scattered parchments, like a dozing gentrywoman seeking a piece of jewelry lost in her bedsheets. I sat behind Ana, as per my station. Miljin, however, took a seat beside Uhad, slouching in his chair, the tip of his long scabbard scraping over the floor. He looked more like a gentryman’s bodyguard than an investigator, someone whose contributions were strength of arms rather than the cerebral. He crossed his arms and shot a sour eye at the whole crew.
“I’ll start with the dead,” said Uhad to Ana. “That work?”
“Certainly,” said Ana. She cocked her blindfolded head, listening.
I slipped out a new vial—this one scented of grass—and sniffed at it to ensure I captured the whole of the moment.
Uhad’s pupils danced until they were a blur. Then he said in a low, solemn voice: “Princeps Atha Lapfir. Signum Misik Jilki. Princeps Keste Pisak. Captain Atos Koris. Captain Kilem Terez. Princeps Donelek Sandik. Princeps Kise Sira. Princeps Alaus Vanduo. Signum Suo Akmuo. And finally, Signum Ginklas Loveh.” His eyes stopped fluttering and he looked to Ana. “These are the ten officers whose deaths are confirmed to be attributed to the dappleglass contagion. I have also provided you with all information on their sleeping quarters and movements in the two days before the incident. That is what we’ve managed to amass thus far.”
Ana rocked back and forth in her seat, her hands flittering over the parchments before her like dancers on a stage. “You say these deaths are confirmed to be attributed to the dappleglass contagion, Uhad,” she said, “because we’re unsure if there could be more?”
“Potentially,” said Uhad. “It’s possible some individuals underwent a similar infestation unnoticed, and then were lost during the breach.”
“The term,” said Nusis chipperly, “is bloom. A dappleglass bloom.”
Uhad extended a hand to her. “A bloom, then. Nusis here is something of an expert on the matter. She cut her teeth during Oypat, assisting the Apoths trying to manage the situation there.”
“Really?” said Ana. “How intriguing! It must be quite something to bear witness to the death of an entire canton, yes?”
An awkward pause.
Nusis cringed. “Ahh. I suppose, yes?”
Kalista cleared her throat. “I don’t think more than these ten succumbed to the bloom, though,” she drawled. A lone tangle of pipe smoke slid up her cheek with the final syllable. “Engineers do not work on the walls unaccompanied for this very reason. If someone was harmed and needed help, it wouldn’t do to be alone. We keep a very thorough accounting of our dead and injured. I think the list ends with the ten.”
“Four of the deceased Engineers died within the sea walls,” said Uhad. “Specifically, what is known as the Peak of Khanum. It is one of the thickest and most fortified portions of the entire sea wall, given that it sits close to the mouth of the Titan’s Path, leading inland.”
“And the other deaths?” asked Ana.
“Two perished while traveling to Talagray from the walls,” said Uhad. His eyes danced again as he summoned up his memories. An ugly sight. I couldn’t help wonder—did it look so unsettling when I did it? “One died in bed, having retired after a long shift. Another while taking a meal at a mess tent. Another while waiting for a carriage to take her west from Talagray to the third-ring walls. And the final victim died atop a horse while reviewing fortifications. All perished in the same way. A malignant bloom of dappleglass growth within the torso, resulting in an eighteen- to twenty-span growth of shoots over the course of five minutes, weakening whatever was above and below it. Gruesome, really.”
Ana’s fingers paused as she found some curious phrase in the text, like a tangle in a loom. “But…these manifestations were slightly different from Blas’s.”
“All shoots emerged from the torso,” said Uhad, “but we did notice these tended to emerge lower. From the middle of the back rather than the top near the neck, as with Commander Blas. We’re not sure why. Nusis is working on it.”
Nusis nodded cheerily, as if examining why plants might burst from someone’s back and not their neck was the most exciting thing in the world.
“They didn’t die at the exact same time, either,” said Uhad. “We’re working off of witness reports here, but there appears to have been a nine- or ten-hour window between the first death and the last.”
“This would suggest,” said Nusis, “that they were infected with the dappleglass spores at different times.”
“Do we know much about their movements the day before they died?” asked Ana.
“We know enough to know they haven’t been all in the same place,” said Kalista lazily. “No overlap in station duty, patrols, projects…It all makes tracing the point of contagion damned hard.”
Ana flipped a page over and moved on to the next, reading it with her fingers. “Do we have lists of their known associates?”
“Not yet,” drawled Kalista.
“Have we interviewed any friends or comrades?”
“Not yet,” said Kalista. “We haven’t interviewed anyone at all. Most of the work we’ve done in Engineering is to try to predict and stop the next attack.”
Ana’s brow furrowed. “Next attack?”
“The operating theory,” explained Uhad, “is that Engineering officers are being targeted. Perhaps in hopes that their inevitable bloom might damage our fortifications, causing another breach, but…after some analysis, we think this somewhat unlikely.”
“I assume,” said Ana, turning to Nusis, “because planning when dappleglass blooms inside someone is utterly fucking mad?”
Nusis’s cheery smile dimmed. She glanced at Uhad, who gave the slightest shake of his head—Ignore it.
“Ah…correct,” said Nusis. “It would be impossible to time a bloom with any accuracy. The nature of a body, the person’s diet, movement, activity, not to mention the number of spores inhaled…these all would affect the growth rate of the dappleglass.”
“And the dead didn’t all work on the walls,” sighed Uhad. “So the idea that someone poisoned ten random Engineers in hopes that some would work in the area where this strut was located—and then, on top of that, that the dappleglass within them would bloom at the exact right time to damage this one exact strut…Well, the idea’s a little preposterous.”
“But they were all Engineers,” said Kalista. “And all lower officers—princeps and signums and captains. That’s who spends most of their time inside the walls.”
“Yet no commanders, like Blas was,” said Ana.
“No,” said Uhad. “But there seems to be a targeting here, a selection. We just can’t see the sense of it yet. Blas was murdered with great intent. We must assume the same for these ten.”
Ana was rocking back and forth in her chair very fast now, flipping over page after page of parchment with her fingers, until she came to the very last one. Her face was tight, expressionless. I was reminded of a barge pilot trying to navigate a narrow canal.
“I would like a list of all witnesses to the deaths,” she said finally.
“That can be done,” said Uhad.
“And I want a list of all the living assignments of the dead going back one year,” said Ana. “As well as a list of who was residing in the same facilities at those times.”
Kalista snuck a wary glance at Uhad. “That’s a tremendous amount of information,” she said.
“But you Engineers have it, don’t you?” said Ana. “The Empire simply loves to write shit down, and I’d assume the living arrangements of the Iyalets here in Talagray would be well recorded.”
“I can get it,” said Kalista reluctantly. “But…it’s a lot. And, as you can expect, the Engineers are overtaxed right now. Might I ask why you need it?”
“To save us all some goddamned time,” said Ana, grinning. “We want to talk to everyone who could know something, yes? Seems wise to start with who’s been physically around the victims for weeks and months.” Then she casually added: “As well as who they might have been fucking. Living arrangements often reveal such relationships—who’s followed who, month after month. Tricky to slip into someone’s bedroom through a window. Better to be in the same building. And lovers, of course, are vital sources of information.”
Kalista, stunned, removed her pipe from her mouth, leaving a faint indentation in her lip. Nusis’s smile was very strained now. I stared fixedly into the back of Ana’s chair.
“We’ll get you that,” said Uhad grimly. “Before the end of the day—yes, Immunis?”
“Certainly,” said Kalista. She watched Ana from behind a veil of smoke. “However…I did think the nature of this relationship was reciprocal, yes? We’d like to get some information from you, too, Immunis, about the previous incident.”
“Yes…” said Ana. “But I had a question for you all first. Did any of you know Commander Blas? Personally?”
The whole room exchanged uncomfortable glances—all except Captain Miljin, who just slouched grumpily in his chair.
“We all did,” said Uhad. “He was one of the most prominent Engineers of the Empire. Architect of some of our greatest defensive artifices. Though I, I admit, probably knew him the least, and only cordially at that…”
“I never served under him,” said Kalista. “But I knew him. I’d met him frequently. Yet that wasn’t unusual. He wasn’t the type to bottle himself up before a drafting board. He had a way of making himself known.”
“I knew him through his activity on the Preservationist Councils,” said Nusis.
Ana’s head swiveled to her. “Tell me more about that, please.”
“Well, ah…he was a liaison to many cantons’ Preservationist evaluations,” Nusis said hesitantly. “Examining whether a new suffusion or alteration, or a new construction project, could impact the natural state of any nearby canton.”
“Say more,” demanded Ana.
“W-well…say you want to apply a suffusion to a riverweed,” said Nusis. She was rattled now, a gleam of sweat on her brow. “To make it grow less in a river. But you find the alteration also causes mold in the river to grow more, and the mold then turns highly acidic when it washes up on a dam downstream, slowly weakening it, imperiling a town below…that kind of thing. These changes have to be well thought out. The slightest alteration threatens enormous effects. Apothetikals and Engineers are the most frequent liaisons on these evaluations, and Blas was very active with us.”
“But what the hell did he do, exactly?” asked Ana, frustrated.
“Well…he reviewed artifices, infrastructures, and constructions that could either be vulnerable to or might enable the escape of contagion from Talagray,” she said. “This is not terribly unusual work, mind…”
“Hm. I see…” Ana said, now sounding bored. “And Captain Miljin? Did you know Blas?”
Miljin shook his head. “Saw him at a distance, ma’am,” he said. His voice was deep and raspy, like his throat was lined with smoking oil. “But never so much as heard the man’s voice.”
“Fine,” said Ana. “So…would those who had met him please tell me more about the nature of the man? I’ve heard precious little about that aspect.”
Uhad shrugged. “He was the image of professionalism. Polite. Studious.”
