The Tainted Cup, page 12
“Very well admired,” agreed Kalista. “Especially within my Iyalet. He had no enemies that I was aware of.”
“He spoke wisely, and when he spoke, he was listened to,” said Nusis.
“I see…” said Ana. She flapped a hand at me. “Thank you. Now—Din. Do the thing.”
I’d tried to make myself inconspicuous thus far, and didn’t much like having so many superior officers look at me. I stood up, bowed, but paused. “Ah—what exactly would you like me to tell them, ma’am?” I asked.
“All of it,” she said. Another flap of her hand. “The full vomit, boy!”
“Right…” I said. “Well. Hold on, then.” Again, I took out the vial of lye-scent, sniffed it, let the memories come pouring into the backs of my eyes, and started talking.
* * *
—
I GAVE THEM the exact same description of the events as I had to Commander-Prificto Vashta. I left nothing out. When I finished, there was a long, lingering silence. I sat back down, replaced the lye vial, and sniffed at the grass one to make sure I captured the rest of the present moment accurately.
“So…” said Uhad slowly. “The groundskeeper met the assassin. But…their face was swollen?”
“Such was his testimony,” said Ana. “I believe there are many disfiguring grafts one could apply, with varying levels of permanence…”
Captain Miljin rumbled to life, clearing his throat rather extensively. “This is so,” he said. “Dernpaste is the preferred one. Swells the areas you apply it to, makes it so your own mother wouldn’t know you. Skin tone’s harder to alter, but…Well. They have stuff for that, too.”
“And I suppose if you all had seen some shadowy figure with a swollen face,” said Ana, “skulking around Blas here with a piece of dappleglass in their hand, you’d have mentioned it by now.”
“Of course,” said Uhad. “But Blas was very active. He moved around a great deal. Many people knew him.”
“What investigatory steps have you taken for him here?” asked Ana.
“With the wet season approaching,” said Uhad, “we’ve only been able to do the minimum, unfortunately. The Apoths reviewed Blas’s offices and living quarters. They found nothing of note.”
“All right…” Then Ana paused. She seemed to be waiting for something. Her smile slowly retracted, and she swiveled her blindfolded face about the table. “Is that all? No one has anything else to say on the matter?”
An uneasy silence followed. Kalista watched Ana, her dark eyes heavily lidded. Nusis stared at the floor, like Ana had just made some embarrassing blunder in etiquette. Uhad watched nobody, his pupils dancing as memories flooded his mind. And Miljin, to my surprise, watched me, arms crossed, his gaze inscrutable.
“Unfortunately,” drawled Kalista, “nothing comes to mind.”
“I see…” said Ana. “Well then. One critical takeaway is that the perpetrator had to be operating here, in Talagray, for weeks if not months. This is the only way they could have known Blas’s movements.”
“That doesn’t necessarily narrow it down,” said Uhad. “There’s a lot of movement here in the months before the wet season.”
“Of course,” said Ana. “But there’s been one distinct signal that dappleglass gives off. One that even Din here, who’d never heard of it before, noticed right away.”
They all looked at me.
“Fernpaper,” I said. “It stains it.”
“Correct,” said Ana. “And I saw quite a lot of fernpaper out there in the city. Lots of quakes here, after all. Has any been found stained? For that would likely lead us directly to the killer—or the site of the poisoning.”
Uhad gestured to Captain Miljin. “If you please, Miljin,” he said, sighing.
Miljin leaned forward, his chair creaking under his bulk. “We read your letter, ma’am,” he said. “And we did look for stained fernpaper. Spoke to a few Legion chaps and discreetly sent them out about the city, asking if anyone had seen any fernpaper blackened since the breach. Heard nothing. Then they toured the city from end to end, examining all the fernpaper walls and windows and doors. Saw nothing. Seems to me, ma’am, that either the perpetrator found a way to contain the spores—which seems unlikely, given all we’ve learned about it—or the poisoning didn’t take place in Talagray at all. If so, that puts us in a spot. We can’t search the whole of the canton.”
I found this news dispiriting—but Ana was just nodding impatiently. “Yes, yes, yes,” she said. “But we need to broaden our timeline! How can we find out if any fernpaper was stained before the breach? Because apparently some mad fucker was running around the city for a good while with this poison in their pocket, possibly leaving a trail behind!”
Kalista laughed, the sound slightly contemptuous. “Well—we can't! There’s no way to find that out.”
“I’m inclined to agree…” said Uhad.
Ana rubbed her hands together, running her pink fingertips over her knuckles. “Captain Miljin—how many fernpaper millers are there in the city?”
“Dozens, ma’am,” he said. “Most of the common structures are made of it, given the quakes.”
“Can you ask these suppliers if they’d replaced any stained fernpaper panels in the four weeks previous to the breach? Or—better yet—can we get a list of all the orders they delivered in that time?”
Miljin nodded. “We could try that, ma’am. I could ask Captain Strovi of the Legion to help—Vashta’s second. He’s been assigned to provide support, as needed.”
“Then I propose we do so,” said Ana. “If we find an unusually big order of panels, that could indicate either the site of the poisoning, or the site where the poison was stored or developed.” She turned her blindfolded face to Uhad. “Though, of course, it’s not my dance…”
Uhad smiled wearily. “How polite of you. Yes, do so, Miljin. While that’s going on, Ana—when will you have your nominees for interviewing?”
“If I can get the lists from Engineering soon enough,” said Ana, “I should have a good idea of who was intimate with the dead by the morning. Will Miljin do the honors of interviewing? And if so—can Din tag along? He’s my eyes and ears.”
Miljin looked me over like I was a burden for his pack animal and he was trying to estimate my weight. “Well…certainly, ma’am.”
“Good. I mean—I could interrogate you, Miljin. But I’m not sure you have the patience for it, and definitely not the time.”
“And I would save him from the punishment,” said Uhad with the tiniest smile. Then he looked to Immunis Nusis. “Though if the young signum is to accompany Miljin outside the city, I believe he will need to have some additional grafts applied, due to contagion…”
“Oh! Yes,” said Nusis, with no small amount of relish. She turned to me and asked, “You’re from Daretana, correct? So you should have all the immunity alterations for the Outer Rim, yes?”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said.
“Then we’ll have to add the Tala canton to them,” she said, sighing. “To protect against any wormrot, or neckworm, or wormbone, or fissure-worm you might encounter out there. As well as cheek-worm, of course.”
I stared at her as I absorbed the expansive variety of worms waiting in the wilds to devour me.
Miljin spoke up with a sadistic smile: “She don’t mean the cheeks on your face, son.”
“How…how might I gain those immunities, ma’am?” I asked.
“Normally you’d make an appointment with the medikkers,” said Nusis. “But as we don’t have time for that, just come by my offices in the Apoth tower once you’re all settled. I’ll get you straightened out.”
“Good,” said Uhad. “Evening falls, I believe. With the canton in a state of emergency, nocturnal passage isn’t permitted in the city for anyone except the Legion. Speaking of which…I doubt if you all know the warning system.”
“I’ve read of it,” said Ana. “But Din likely hasn’t.”
Miljin squinted at me. “You know the flares, Signum?”
I shook my head. “No, sir.”
The captain stuck his thumb eastward. “You see green flares in the eastern skies, that means a leviathan’s been spotted—so, keep watching the skies. You see red ones after that, means it’s come ashore, and is close to the walls, so get ready to evacuate if the worst happens. If yellow flares follow, that means it’s made it past the walls—so run like hell.”
There was a stark silence.
“Blue flares means it’s wandered off or been killed,” he said. He grinned mirthlessly. “Don’t see those too often.”
“On that note…” said Uhad. He stood, wavering slightly. I wondered if his lack of sleep made him light-headed. “I should take you to your quarters, Ana. If I recall correctly, it does take you some time to get acclimated to new environs.”
“The problem with being an engraver, Uhad,” said Ana, “is that you can’t pull any of the ‘not sure if I recall’ politeness bullshit, because we all know you can damned well recall perfectly.” She stood, grinning, and said, “Take me up there. Din can follow with my trunks.”
* * *
—
THE IUDEX TOWER was a grand, circular, curling structure, creaking and wheezing as the wind played with its fretvine walls. Frail leaves bloomed at the edges of the ceilings and balconies, and occasionally one spied the odd flower. Yet it was stable, and safe, and I was glad to be in it and not out in the city.
Uhad had put Ana up in a small office on the east side of the Iudex tower, on the third floor, whereas I was on the fifth. I guessed the more senior you were, the fewer stairs you had to run down while escaping a leviathan. The two of them sat in her chambers talking merrily while I hauled Ana’s trunks up the stairs, delivering them one after another. When I finished hauling up the final trunk—Ana had apparently brought several loads of books, despite my warnings not to—they were chatting like old friends.
“…never could figure how you lasted so long in the inner rings,” Uhad was saying to her as I dragged in the last trunk. He was leaning against a wall and attempting to smile, yet he seemed such a gloomy sort that the effort threatened to sprain something. “Sounded like a viper’s nest.”
“Though Talagray sounds hardly any better,” Ana said. “I wonder how many horrors are trapped in that head of yours, Tuwey.”
“More than my fair share, maybe,” he admitted. “And though my fits are few, I do have them now and again…I have to keep going to Nusis to get grafts to help me manage my headaches.”
I paused in my labors as I heard that. Engravers, I knew, tended to experience mental breakdown the more information they engraved in their minds: depressions, fits of rage, moments of dislocation. As an engraver myself, I wondered if this was a glimpse into my future.
“I’d settle for a station in the third ring of the Empire, frankly,” sighed Uhad. “Some canton where cow thievery is the greatest crime. And yet…the years grow short, yes?”
“Maybe this will be your last parade, Tuwey,” Ana said. “Save the Empire, get sent to greener pastures.”
I shoved Ana’s trunk into the corner, then sat on its top, panting and puffing.
“Maybe,” Uhad said. “But you—you’ll keep chewing through the world like a crackler’s pick-hatchet, yes?”
Ana grinned. “As long as they’ll let me.”
I wiped sweat from my brow, glaring at them as they laughed. With one final goodbye, Immunis Uhad departed. I bowed and shut the door behind him.
Instantly, the grin melted off Ana’s face. “Odd,” she said. “Odd, Din! What the hell was that?”
“Ahh. Pardon, ma’am?” I said.
“I mean…What was your read on that?” asked Ana. “Wasn’t something missing from all that? Or am I mad?”
I silently reviewed her friendly discussion with Uhad. “Did…did you expect your discussion with Immunis Uhad to go…elsewhere, ma’am?”
“What?” she said. “No! Not that! I mean that whole goddamned meeting down there! Didn’t you notice something wrong with that, Din?”
“Besides your consistent use of wildly inappropriate language, ma’am?”
She glared at me from behind her blindfold. “Come, come. Think. Did that meeting feel right to you?”
I thought about it. “No.”
“Good. Now tell me, honestly—what did you see that felt wrong? This is important.”
I thought about it, my eyes fluttering as I summoned each memory of the meeting: each fleeting glance, each gesture, each turn of the head and twist in the seat.
“They were…nervous,” I said finally. “About the breach, yes. But also about…something else.”
“Go on,” said Ana.
“It was something when you asked if they knew Blas,” I said. “They all went quiet. Nusis stared at the floor. Kalista only watched you. Tried to pretend she didn’t care what you were saying, but she very clearly did. Uhad was all up in his own head. Looking at memories, trying to figure out something on his own, probably. And Miljin…Well. He looked mostly at me, ma’am. Not sure why. But the man stuck his eyes on me and didn’t take them off.”
“Good,” she said. “Well seen, well captured. But you still haven’t noticed what was missing. Before your vomit of words, all those people down there testified that Commander Blas was an upstanding, admirable, studious imperial officer. Brilliant and beloved and all that bullshit.” She stabbed the air with her index finger. “But then you, dear Din, stood up and told them how he’d gotten killed during a fun countryside jaunt to a Haza house to get his prick wet in paid quim! And what did they say about that?”
“Oh! Well…nothing, ma’am,” I said.
“Nothing!” she said triumphantly. “None of them seemed shocked, appalled, or even interested! They didn’t say a damn thing, even when I gave them every chance to do so! Just went on discussing the case! Isn’t that terribly strange to you?”
“Yes,” I said. I summoned my memories of the last days of Blas’s case. “And you didn’t include that information in the letter you sent here, so they didn’t already know it.”
“Hell no. I’m not stupid enough to commit accusations of whoring to parchment. So it should have been a revelation.”
“And you don’t think they were trying to focus on the breach, ma’am?”
“You hear a sordid tale like that, you at least say something. But none of them even reacted to it.”
“And what’s the significance of this, ma’am?”
“Ohh…dunno yet,” said Ana. “But nothing good. I shall have to think on it.” The breeze played with her white hair, and she turned to the window in her chamber. “Window’s open, Din. Please shut it, or I’ll never get acclimated to this place.”
I went to the window, then paused, watching as the mai-lanterns of the city winked out one after another, the whole of Talagray growing dark like some rising tide was snuffing it out. Soon all I could see was the curve of the towers and the shimmer of the gleaming jungles to the north and the west. I looked east, toward the sea walls, but could see nothing at all through the mist. I closed the shutters and fastened them.
“We need,” said Ana behind me, “to get ahold of Blas’s secretary. The woman who ran his life for him—Rona Aristan. You remember her address, don’t you, Din?”
I did. I’d read it aloud to myself when I’d gotten her letter, and the words still echoed in my ears. “The woman who claimed she knew nothing about Blas’s trip to Daretana,” I said.
“Yes, but she’s obviously full of shit there,” said Ana. She ripped her blindfold off and massaged her eyes. “I want to get her and squeeze her like a fucking rimefruit. Something’s going on here that no one wants to discuss, and I think she must touch some of it.”
I watched Ana glowering into the floor, her face tight like she’d swallowed a lump of sour porridge.
“You say this, ma’am,” I said, “like this will be some bit of skullduggery.”
“Oh, it is,” said Ana, “because we’re not going to tell Uhad or the rest of them about her.”
“Why not?”
“Because they should have brought her up already,” said Ana. “In fact, they should have already interviewed her! But all of them seem reluctant to look too much into the dead Commander Blas. And I want to find out why.”
A knock at the door. I opened it to find a young Engineering officer, his knees quaking as he held a giant box full of coils of parchments. “Documents for the…the investigator,” he panted.
I thanked him, took the load, and hauled it inside. “Think this is what you asked Immunis Kalista for, ma’am.”
“Good!” She sat down on the floor and dug into them. “Hopefully I can figure out some pattern among all these people and figure out who you need to talk to tomorrow. We have to understand all the locations those dead Engineers visited the days before the breach. Because despite all that we’re lacking here, Din, what we really need is the place the murder happened. These people were all poisoned somewhere—maybe in more than one place, but I’m betting against it. They all passed through one space in creation, one cursed little spot of this earth—and when they left that space, they were dead. They just didn’t know it yet. That’s what you and Miljin must find.”
“Anything I should know about Captain Miljin, ma’am?” I asked. “If I’m going to be working the interviews with him tomorrow, any advice would be welcome.”
“I know he’s a war hero. Fought in one rebellion or another. He’s a bit like the Empire itself, I suppose. Very well thought of, famously tough—and also old. Maybe too old, these days.” A flash of a grin. “He was once rumored to be terribly handsome, if I recall. Tell me—does he still have thick wrists, Din? Thick wrists, and big, square, meaty hands?”
“How is that pertinent, ma’am?”
