The Tainted Cup, page 14
“Hurt in the collapse, sir,” the attendant said. “Rather serious. She’s recuperating down the hall, last room on the right.”
I went to the room and knocked on the closed door. No answer. I turned the knob, walked in—and stopped short.
I’d never been in a true medikkers’ bay before. As such, I was unprepared for what I found.
A single mai-lantern glimmered over a large, metal bathing cauldron situated in the center of the dark fretvine room. The cauldron was filled with a curious, whitish fluid that smelled strongly of old milk. Lying in the fluid was a tall Kurmini woman, her head resting back on the lip of the cauldron, her eyes shut, face pale and sweating. Though I couldn’t see far into the milky substance in the tub, she was surely naked beneath it.
This was startling enough, but more startling still was the contraption of rope and wires hanging overhead, which suspended her right arm above the waters—yet her arm lacked a hand. In its place was a pale pink stump, and clinging to the stump like barnacles on the hull of a ship were dozens of tiny black snails, greedily sucking away at her open wound.
I stared at the snails, horrified. Then I felt a fluttering in the backs of my eyes, and I remembered something my old dueling teacher Trof had once said in jest: And if any of you lose an arm or an ear by accident, don’t fret, children—the medikkers will slap sangri-snails on the wound until they can grow you a new one.
Well, I thought. I guess that’s what those look like, then. Another memory I’d never be able to get out of my head. I reminded myself to stay controlled and contained.
I opened my engraver’s pack, slid out a vial, and smelled it. This one was redolent of smoke and ash. I grimaced, walked to the foot of the tub, and cleared my throat.
Topirak didn’t move.
“Princeps?” I said.
Her brow creased ever so faintly. A clean face, handsome and even. Bruises all on one side, now turned the color of old tea. Her skin was gray, much like mine, but her nose was clearly the focus of her alterations: it was purpled and slightly larger than normal, with many veins behind the nostrils. A common grafting in the Apoths, I knew: the ability to smell a concoction or a wound and identify its state was critical in their Iyalet.
“Princeps?” I said, louder.
With a snort and a moan, Topirak awoke. “Wh…wha?” She opened her swollen eyes. Their whites were utterly bloodshot. When she saw me, her eyes went even wider and she cried out in alarm, shouting, “Who the hell are you?”
“Ahh,” I said, bewildered. I looked behind myself, wondering if someone was standing behind me. “I…I’m Signum Dinios Kol of the Iudex, Princeps. What’s wrong?”
She stared at me for a moment, then sighed in relief. “Oh, thank Sanctum…Do you know, when I saw you standing there over me, all dressed in darks and glowering down at me…” She laughed wearily. “I thought you were Death himself come for me, sir.”
I paused, wondering what to say. I’d been called all kinds of names during my short career with the Iyalets, but no one had ever mistaken me for the Harvester.
“It’s the bath, sir,” she explained. “There’s stuff in these waters that does stuff to your head.” She sniffed it. “Murgrass, mostly. A type of algae. Its feces offers many healing properties. That’s what makes the water white, you see…” She sniffed it again. “Also ceterophins, a sleeping reagent…And altias oils. For constipation. Don’t want me shitting in here.”
“Impressive skill,” I said.
She smiled weakly. “Blessed Atir of the Khanum, they say, had altered herself so she could awake and sniff the air, and know the placement of every bird and beast and flower about her for a mile…Though I doubt if she ever wound up in a bath like this. I sleep so much…I don’t even know what day it is anymore.”
“It’s the eighteenth of the month of Kyuz,” I said, “and I’m not from the deadlands, but the Iudex. I’m hoping you can help me with a few questions about the breach.”
“Why’s the Iudex investigating a breach, sir?” she croaked.
I ignored the question, took a chair from the corner, and sat down beside her. “I need to ask you about Signum Misik Jilki,” I said.
A shadow of sorrow crossed her face. “M-Misik’s dead, sir,” she whispered.
“I know that, Princeps. Did you know her well?”
She shifted in the milky fluid, her expression pained. The white tide sloshed about her torso, revealing a luminous curve of a breast, blackened with storm clouds of bruises. “Yes.”
“Very well?”
She glared at me. She was waking up now. “We were lovers, sir. But that’s not against policy, being as we’re from different Iyalets, is it?”
“I see,” I said. I was learning to stop being surprised when Ana’s hunches turned out to be right. “How long were you involved with her?”
A slow, sluggish blink as she did the math. “God…three years now.”
“I’m sorry for your loss, and…” I resisted the urge to look down at her missing hand. “…and for what happened to you. I’m trying to learn a little more about how Jilki died.”
“Why?”
Again, I ignored her question. “Would you have seen her the day before her death?”
Topirak shook her head.
“No?”
“No, sir. She was at the walls,” she murmured. “Stayed there overnight, sir.”
“She was there all day?” I asked.
“Yes, sir. And the two days before that.”
“And she went nowhere besides the walls?”
“Not as far as I’m aware, sir.”
“Nowhere with steam, or water, or the like?”
“Don’t…don’t quite know what you’re asking, sir. Has something gone wrong?”
I considered what to say. One of the snails trailed across her severed wrist, leaving a stripe of pink flesh behind.
“When was the last time you saw Jilki, Princeps?” I asked.
“I saw her four days before she died, I think, sir?”
“And what were her movements on that day?”
“She went to the walls in the morning, and came back, sir.”
“And the day before that?” I asked.
“The same.”
I narrowed my eyes as I put this together. “So…just to make sure. For the six days previous to her death, the only places she went were here, at these quarters, and to the walls?”
“Yes, sir.”
I did not like the feel of this. I knew from Uhad’s report that two of the ten dead Engineers had been stationed in Talagray and had not visited either the walls or the Forward Engineering Quarters. Hearing that Jilki had only visited these places before her death would mean there was no commonality among the ten, which would make determining where they’d all been poisoned much harder.
“You’re asking about contagion,” said Topirak. “Aren’t you, sir?”
“What makes you say that?” I asked, perhaps too sharply.
“I’m a medikker, sir. I know the questions. Want to figure out where they’ve been, what they touched, where they got it. Is that the case, sir?”
“Somewhat.”
“I thought Misik had died in the collapse. When the walls fell. Why…why ask about contagion? And why’s the Iudex investigating a contagion, and not the Apoths?”
“We’re just trying to understand more. Is there anything you can think of along those lines, Princeps?”
“N-no,” she said. “When Misik wasn’t at her duties, she was with me.” The weak smile again. “That’s as I liked it.”
She looked to me for sympathy. But I could feel something amiss now, and didn’t give her any.
A drip as Topirak shifted in her bath. Her eyes searched the ceiling, anxious and fretful. She opened her mouth to speak, then stopped. I waited for it to come.
“Did Misik…do something wrong, sir?” she asked.
There it was.
“I don’t know,” I said honestly. “Do you think Jilki did something wrong?”
“No,” she said. She stared up at the ceiling again, her pupils darting about. “But on the eighth night before the breach…”
“Yes?” I said. “What happened then?”
She swallowed. Tears meandered down her cheeks to drop into the white bath. “She…she went back into town, to Talagray. She stayed the night there.”
“What for?” I asked.
“She was…working on some kind of project. Something to do with the quakes. The walls had been destabilized. She…she went back to town for a meeting. Couldn’t tell me what it was about. Wasn’t allowed, she said.”
“Why not?” I asked.
“Something about not wanting to start a panic, sir,” she said. “Didn’t want people to know how bad the walls were. It felt very secret.”
“I see,” I said. I let the silence linger, then asked, “Did you believe her?”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
I gazed into her face. Eyes wide and fearful, jaw trembling.
“I’m here to prevent other deaths, Princeps,” I said. “Other injuries like yours. If something’s wrong, I need to know.”
“It was just…just a feeling,” she whispered. “When she went to Talagray for these meetings, she was always quiet after. And there was something she said, both times.” She screwed up her face, and said, “The Engineers make the world. Everyone else just lives in it.”
“This wasn’t the first time she went to Talagray for such a meeting?” I asked.
“No. She’d gone once two months before, sir.”
“And any time before that?” I asked.
She thought about it, then shook her head.
“When was this previous meeting?” I asked. “The exact date.”
“The seventh of the month of Egin, I think.”
“And this…this feeling you got, after she returned from these meetings. Can you tell me a little more about it?”
She stared into the milky waters before her. “I was worried she had met someone else,” she said finally. “And there was a smell about her, each time. She’d washed, I could tell, but…but it’s hard to hide things like that from me. Oranje-leaf, and bitters. Like the sotwine they make in the cold countries. It was strange. Strange enough to make me think she was seeing someone else. But I wasn’t sure, so…so I didn’t want to ask. I just wanted to keep her.”
“I see,” I said.
She looked at me pleadingly. “Did she, sir? Do you know? Do you know if she’d been with someone else, sir?”
“I don’t. But I have to keep looking. Would you like me to tell you what I find out, Princeps?”
She thought about it, the dark, bruised side of her face bent to the waters. Then she shook her head. “No. I’ve lost enough. I want to keep the last few days I had with her, at least. I want those to stay mine.” A miserable laugh. “I mean—I’m owed that, at least, aren’t I?”
CHAPTER 14
| | |
I CONDUCTED FOUR OTHER interviews after Topirak. All of the people were exhausted and grieving and injured—one man concussed, one woman missing a foot, another with her head and face all bandaged up—and none wished to talk to me. Yet I stayed with them, stalking among the bandages and baths; and as I sniffed my ash-scented vial and pulled words from their battered minds, a pattern began to emerge among the dead Engineers.
Princeps Donelek Sandik had returned to the city of Talagray eight nights before the breach to check on an injured comrade—the same night that Jilki had gone back, the sixth of the month of Kyuz.
Captain Atos Koris had gone to Talagray to arrange a shipment of materials—also on the sixth of Kyuz.
That exact same night, Signum Suo Akmo and Princeps Kise Sira had both returned to the city for reasons they claimed to be high imperial secrets. In fact, after I asked more questions, I discovered this wasn’t Sira’s first visit: she had also gone back to Talagray on the exact same date as Jilki’s first visit two months before, the seventh of the month of Egin.
Everything was slowly lining up.
The only outlier was the man I’d been sent to interview about Princeps Atha Lapfir. I went to his healing bay only to find his bath empty and dry, the sole sign of his occupancy a straw cap in the corner. When I asked the medikker, she said simply, “Died last night. We can only do so much.”
I stood in the halls of the medikkers’ wing afterward, thinking this over. Five of the dead Engineers had visited the city eight nights before the breach, all for reasons either vague or mysterious.
And their reasons all tasted, I thought, rather like bullshit. Jilki hadn’t been working on some secret project for the walls, for Kalista would have mentioned it if she had. I began to suspect that if I looked into it, I’d find no shipment of materials that Koris had gone to arrange, nor would I find any injured comrade of Sandik’s in the city. They had gone somewhere in Talagray, all of them, and had lied about it to their friends and lovers.
However, only Princeps Sira and Signum Jilki had gone back to Talagray on the seventh of Egin, two months before.
A regular meeting, perhaps—and a curiously secret one. Secret enough for everyone to lie about. And eventually, someone had come to this secret meeting of Engineers, and brought death with them.
* * *
—
WHEN I FINALLY met up with Captain Miljin, he wasn’t half as enthused or excited as I was. “By Sanctum, this is awful work,” he said, huffing as he walked up. “These poor bastards…I had to talk to one man with both his legs missing! Bastard was worried the medikkers won’t grow the new ones to be the right size…”
“It is rather deplorable, sir,” I said.
“That’s a big word for a shit state.” He grimaced as one attendant wheeled by a man whose face was obscured by linen bandages. “Honestly, you’d have to be a coldhearted, bastardly fuck to question people like these properly.”
I chose not to comment.
“I found fuck-all,” he said. He pulled out a parchment and squinted at it. “Only thing of note I got was that Captain Kilem Terez had been worried the last couple of days that he was being followed. By a damned crackler, of all things.”
“A crackler was following him?” I said.
“Yeah.” He snorted. “It’s got to be bullshit. Cracklers are what, ten span tall? Can’t think of anyone worse to go sneaking and following folk about. Said the crackler had yellow hair, too. Damn odd. I figure the fellow I talked to had a bruised brain. What did you get, lad?”
I told him what I’d found, and his eyes grew wide with amazement.
“You got all that out of them?” Miljin said. “Really? Your bedside manner must be far better than mine, boy.”
“Can’t say, sir. But that’s five out of the ten dead folk who returned to the city—all on the eighth night before they died. What do you think of it?”
“Well.” He snorted and ruffled his mustache with a knuckle. “It almost makes sense.”
“Almost?”
“Yeah.” He consulted his notes, frowning as he flipped through his smudged parchments. “But I have one of the dead ten who hasn’t been back to Talagray for weeks. Which breaks your pattern, yeah?”
I felt my heart dribbling down through my ribs and into my boots. “Who, sir?”
“Signum Ginklas Loveh,” he said. He wrinkled up his nose as he read. “This is what her, ah…hell, I guess her lover said, this Signum Sirgdela Vartas I questioned, of the Legion. He said she hasn’t been near Talagray for almost a month. And if she didn’t go to Talagray at all, then that’s not the place of the poisoning, is it?”
“What about the date of the other meeting?” I said. “On the seventh of the month of Egin?”
Miljin consulted his notes. “No, she wasn’t in Talagray then, neither.”
“Then where was she? Here at the base?”
“No…Vartas said that our dead Signum Loveh went to the walls on some trip with Commander Blas himself. That’s all else he could give me.”
My skin went cold.
“Wait. When? What date in Egin, exactly?” I asked.
He consulted his notes again. “The, ah, seventh and eighth of that month,” he said.
I thought this over. Then I slowly slid out my vial of lye-scent and smelled it.
My eyes trembled, and all the details of the Daretana murder filled my mind, like my skull was once again a bubble of water full of leaping fish.
“He just…he just volunteered this to you, sir?” I asked.
“Yes…why? What’s wrong with it, boy?”
“I…I think this Signum Vartas lied to you, sir,” I said. “No—I know he did.”
Miljin went stone-faced. “Did he.”
“Yes. But I’m not yet sure why. I’d like to find out. Is that all right, sir?”
His jaw worked for a moment. Then he made a fist with his right hand, and all the knuckles of his massive hand crackled all at once. “That,” he said, “would be perfectly lovely.”
* * *
—
UNLIKE EVERYONE ELSE I’d interviewed, Signum Vartas was out of his healing bath and lying on a cot, with a tray of tea and a slender shootstraw pipe smoking in an ashpot beside him. He wore a set of silk robes that looked brand new, and while his injuries weren’t mild by any means—he had haal-paste applied in streaks to his shoulder and neck, probably from gashes he’d gotten during the collapse—he seemed to be recovering much faster than everyone else in the bays here. His room even had a window. None of the others had.
He cocked an eyebrow as Miljin and I walked in—a cold, imperious look—and he put down his pipe. “What’s this now?” he asked. “I thought I’d answered all your questions, Captain.”
I sat down in front of him, not bothering to bow or salute. “I just had a few more myself, Signum Vartas.”
