The Tainted Cup, page 15
He looked down his nose at me. He was a tall, thin Rathras man, with a high brow and deep-set eyes that looked out at you like you were a household servant he didn’t entirely trust yet. “And you are?” he asked.
“Signum Kol, Iudex. Just comparing dates.”
“I gave Captain Miljin here all the dates I knew.”
“I just wanted to check something. Can you tell me again about Signum Loveh’s movements during the days previous to her death?”
“I can confirm all that I told Captain Miljin,” he said, bristling slightly. “Or are you doubting his word and mine?”
“You told the captain that Loveh had never been to Talagray,” I said.
“Yes? Not for weeks before she died.”
“Can you remember the last time she’d gone there?”
“No. Could have been months, really. Why?”
“But you were intimate with Signum Loveh, correct?”
His cold gaze danced over my face. He picked back up his shootstraw pipe and puffed at it. “A shake to your eyes…” he said softly. “You’re Sublime, like me. You know relationships are tricky for those like us.”
“You didn’t answer my question,” I said.
“Fine. Yes, I was intimate with her.”
“So you would have known when she went back to Talagray.”
“Yes, and she didn’t!” he said. Tufts of smoke trickled out of his nostrils. “What’s the point of this?”
“And the only other time that you mentioned was one instance, when she went out with Commander Blas.”
“Yes!”
“And where did they go?”
“To inspect the walls! I’m sure Miljin told you that!”
Miljin, however, gave Vartas nothing, staring at him with his flat, dark gaze.
“What date was that?” I asked.
“The seventh and eighth,” Vartas said. “Of the month of Egin. Just over two months ago.”
I watched him. His cold little eyes stared into mine, but I glimpsed a fragile gleam there, a tremble in his pupils.
“That’s not true,” I said. “And you know it.”
“The hell do you mean?” he demanded.
I felt a flutter in my own eyes, and the memory burbled up: me hurrying away into the gardens of the Haza house in Daretana, and reading Blas’s records of his inspections aloud, committing the dates to memory. One line in particular now swam up in my skull: ck. Paytasız bridges in the north of the Tala canton—6th to 8th of Egin—all pass.
“Because,” I said, “Commander Blas wasn’t at the walls at all then.”
Vartas went very still. “What?” he asked.
“Commander Taqtasa Blas was in the north of the canton, inspecting the bridges, from the sixth to the eighth of that month. I’ve seen his diary. So that is very wrong, Vartas.”
His gaze stayed steady. He slowly replaced his shootstraw pipe in his mouth and puffed at it. “Then I was wrong. She was with Blas during some other day.”
“Which days?”
“The fourteenth and fifteenth of Egin. Just a slight mistake.”
I shook my head. “That’s wrong, too.”
“The hell it is!”
“No. Blas was in the Daretana canton then. From the thirteenth through the fifteenth of the month of Egin. I know that, too. I know all of his movements for the past three months.”
Vartas blinked. The coal of his shootstraw pipe danced as his hand trembled. Miljin slowly rose and came to stand behind me.
“We’ve two options here,” I said. “Either you have no idea where Signum Loveh was during any of these days—or, you told the captain here a lie, and she did go to Talagray eight days before the breach. But you didn’t want Miljin to know that, and when he didn’t ask about it, you didn’t speak up. But I’m guessing you got nervous. You wanted to give her an alibi for the other time she visited Talagray, on the night of the seventh of Egin—the same meeting that two other of the dead Engineers attended. Just in case. But you misstepped there. Picked the wrong person to put her with. Unlucky for you. You could have just kept quiet, and we’d have never known. But now we do.”
“Know what?” Vartas said grudgingly.
“That you know why she went to Talagray,” I said. “None of the others knew, so none of them tried to lie. But you did.”
He lifted his shootstraw pipe back up to his lips. It was positively prancing now. “I don’t know,” he said softly, “what the hell you’re talking abou—”
Then Miljin moved.
I had not been watching him, so I had not been prepared for it. But there was a quick clack-clack sound, like someone unlocking a lock; and the next thing I knew his sword was in his hand, spinning around as lightly as if it were a length of straw—and then he was stabbing it down, thrusting it through the cot directly between Vartas’s legs up to the hilt, a mere smallspan or two away from the man’s crotch.
Vartas screamed, his shootstraw pipe tumbling out of his teeth. He tried to sit up, but Miljin placed a fist on his sternum and shoved him back down.
“Did you lie to me, Signum?” Miljin bellowed. “Did you fucking lie to me?”
I stared at the sword, mere spans before my face. Its blade was not shining steel, I noticed, but a pale, sickly, whitish green.
Vartas’s screams rose into shrieks, and he began slapping at the side of his robe. A small thread of aromatic smoke was gently unscrolling from his clothing above his hip. I darted my hand into the man’s robe, found the shootstraw pipe that had slipped to his side, plucked it out, and stuck it in his teacup, where it died with a sputtering hiss.
* * *
—
STILL TREMBLING AND quaking, Vartas gave us the full spill of it. I sniffed at my ash-scent vial and listened.
“I…I don’t know what it was about,” he said, sniffing. “I don’t know why Gink went to Talagray. But I knew it had something to do with her career. With her prospects.”
Miljin stood huffing over me like an angry boar. I tried to focus on Vartas’s words.
“How do you know this?” I asked.
“Because after she started going, everything started going right for her,” he said. “Plum projects. Faster promotions. Greater pay. Far greater pay, really, working under Commander Blas.”
Every muscle in my body went tight. “Commander Blas? She worked with him?”
He nodded.
“What did she do for him?”
“Engineering stuff, I suppose. Diagrams and bridges and such. I just knew she went to Talagray every few months, and the money came in. And I was told to not ask questions, and keep my mouth shut. Which I did. Not like she ever thanked me, though.”
I took in his fine robes, his tea tray, the aroma of his pipe. Suddenly his living situation didn’t seem quite so remarkable.
“How many times did she go to the city for these meetings?” I asked.
“I don’t know. Ten times. Maybe more.”
This was noteworthy. Signum Loveh, it seemed, was a much more regular visitor than all of the other dead Engineers I’d asked about.
“I asked to be let in on the secret,” Vartas said resentfully. “To get to go, too. But she said it wasn’t allowed. Said I had to be chosen. What made you chosen, I didn’t know. I mean, when I looked at the rest of her little gang, I couldn’t see what made them so special.”
Miljin and I glanced at one another, our interest piqued.
“Gang?” I asked. “What gang is this?”
“Dunno if it was a gang, precisely,” Vartas muttered. “Just…just pals, perhaps. Friends. But they all seemed to bear some blessing from above.”
“Names,” spat Miljin. “Give us their names, damn you.”
“D-damn it all,” he stammered. “I’m a spatiast, not an engraver! I don’t keep this shit behind my eyes!” He grumbled for a moment. “Gink was friendly with three of them. Might have been more, but she and those three hung together tight.” One finger probed where his pipe had burned him on his side as he thought. “Vanduo. That was one, I think.”
I nodded. Princeps Alaus Vanduo—that was one of the dead.
“And the next…I think the name was Lapa? Lapir?”
“Lapfir?” I suggested.
“I think that was it. Maybe, yes. That was it.”
Princeps Atha Lapfir, then. Another of the dead ten.
“And the last…” Vartas frowned for a moment. “The last was…Jolgalgan. Right. That was her.”
I looked at him blankly. Then I looked at Miljin, who stared blankly back at me. This name was totally new.
“Ah…who?” I asked.
“Jolgalgan,” said Vartas again. He nodded. “That was her. Captain Kiz Jolgalgan. I remember because she was an Apoth, and no one else was.”
My eyes fluttered as I riffled among the many names I’d heard in the past day. Yet Captain Kiz Jolgalgan, I knew, was most certainly not one of the ten dead Engineers.
“You’re…you’re sure about this?” I asked. “You’re sure this person was grouped in with Loveh and the rest of the Engineers?”
“I am,” he said. He’d recovered his pride and stuck his nose in the air. “I told you I remembered, and why. Try listening.”
My thoughts danced as I turned this bit of information over. I caught Miljin’s eye, and saw a keen, burning look in his face, and knew he was thinking the same thing as me.
We have a survivor. An eleventh member of the group. Someone who went to one of these mysterious meetings—and maybe walked away.
“Describe her, then,” said Miljin. “What’d this gal look like?”
“Tall woman,” said Vartas. “Broad. Very stern, very serious. Face like she’s always sucking on a lemon seed.”
“What race was she?” Miljin asked. “Tala? Rathras? Kurmini?”
“You know…I couldn’t quite tell,” admitted Vartas. “She had a Kurmini name, but she didn’t look Kurmini. She was far too tall, and her hair was pale yellow, and tightly curled. I’ve never seen a Kurmini with hair like that.”
“What assignment did she serve under in the Apoths?” asked Miljin.
“Don’t know. I never talked to her in person. I wasn’t invited to the party,” he said bitterly.
We quizzed him further on this Jolgalgan, but he could give us little. Eventually I gave up and tried a new angle. “Did Signum Loveh bring anything back from these meetings?” I asked.
“No,” said Vartas.
“Did she bring anything to these meetings?” I asked. “Documents? Money?”
“No, but…” He frowned, thinking. “But sometimes she…she took something from her quarters on these visits. A little coin thing, it looked like. I caught her putting it in her pocket once. I asked what it was, and she said she couldn’t tell me. So I…”
“So you reckoned it was part of these meetings,” I said.
He nodded. “But that’s all I knew. I just knew the meetings, the money, the coin—and not to ask questions. When you came and brought her up, I…I worried it was some corruption. I thought she had the right to lie in peace with a clear name, and thought Commander Blas could maybe help give her cover…”
I looked him over and didn’t see any lie there. Evidently the man didn’t know.
“Commander Blas is dead,” I said.
“He…he what?” said Vartas, shocked.
“Blas is dead,” I said. “Along with all these other Engineers who went to these little secret meetings. Probably because of these secret meetings. So if there’s anything else you know, you need to tell us now.”
“I don’t know anything more!” said Vartas.
“You sure, boy?” said Miljin.
“I promise, I don’t!” Then a faint pout of horror crept into his face. “Why are you two asking about this? Does this have anything to do with the breach?”
There was a long silence. Miljin picked up one of Vartas’s unlit shootstraw pipes and sniffed at it. “You keep yourself in this bed, Signum,” he said. “You keep your fucking money. And you keep your mouth shut. Otherwise, I am going to come back here—and this?” He pointed to the gash in the bed, between Vartas’s legs. “I shall do the same again, but six smallspan higher. And then six again, and six again. Am I clear?”
Beads of sweat came boiling out of Vartas’s brow. “As mountain water, sir.”
“Good.” He pocketed the shootstraw pipe and swatted my shoulder. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
* * *
—
MILJIN AND I stood in the medikkers’ halls, thinking in silence as the attendants swarmed around us.
“So,” he said.
“So, sir,” I said.
“We got mysterious meetings of Engineers, meeting about…something. Don’t know what yet. But all with Commander Blas involved.”
“Correct, sir.”
“And now we’ve got an Apoth who might be a part of it,” he said. “Except—her name ain’t on the list of the dead.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Got to get ahold of her quick,” he said. “And press her to tell us what in hell happened in these damn meetings. I’ll tell the Legion lads to start a lookout for her. But maybe she’s dead, too. Tree-speared out in the middle of some fucking field somewhere, and we haven’t found her yet.” He sighed and rubbed the back of his head. “Meanwhile, we’ve got black-clad assassins in Daretana.”
“We do, sir.”
“This along with, you know, people sprouting trees from inside theirselves, and all that’s brought about.”
“Yes, sir.”
He snorted and spat on the floor. “Fucking hell. What a mess.” Then he chewed his lip, thinking. “You know, if I had some magic coin that could let me into some secret meetings, well…”
“…you wouldn’t take it with you to the sea walls, sir?” I suggested.
“Hell no. Sure wouldn’t. I’d keep it somewhere safe.”
“I agree, sir.”
We stood there in contemplative silence. Then two attendants wheeled by a wooden cart, one wheel squeaking wildly. The cart carried a large glass tank, like an aquarium—but as it passed before us, we saw it did not contain any conventional fish. Rather, a massive, rippling, purplish starfish was gripping the bottom of the tank—and growing from its back was a human hand.
The hand’s fingers flexed and twitched very slowly as it passed before us, as if exulting in the flow of the water. It had a feminine look to it. Something delicate in the nails and knuckles.
We watched in silence as the tank went by, the one wheel squeaking in protest.
“Looks like Topirak’s getting a replacement,” said Miljin.
I cleared my throat. “Looks that way, sir,” I said hoarsely.
Miljin waited to speak again until its squeak had long faded. Then he grunted.
“Let’s go check Loveh’s quarters for that fucking coin,” he said, “before someone wheels one of them starfish by with a prick growing from its back, and I faint and crack my head open and wind up in one of these goddamn baths.”
* * *
—
WE FOUND LOVEH’S quarters on the west side of the building. A small chamber with a single bed, trunk, closet, bookshelf—but if you had the eye for it, the suggestions of wealth could be found all around us. Bedsheets fine and silky. Jar of soapdust on the windowsill, frothy and fragrant. Closet full to bursting with clothing far beyond what most Iyalets doled out.
I walked across the floorboard, taking in the room. “Such a small coin,” I said, “really could be anywhere—”
Then Miljin’s green-bladed sword was in his hand, and he went to work.
His sword bit through the bed, the clothes, the walls of the room, chewing through the fretvine, through the planked wood, carving up everything in sight.
“Sir?” I said, alarmed. “What are you doing?”
“Looking,” he grunted. His sword slashed open the lock of a trunk, and he dumped clothing from it. “What else?”
“We can’t destroy the property of other officers, sir,” I said. “Not without due cause, whi—”
“She’s dead!” he snapped. “And the damn walls have been breached! And you didn’t seem to complain when I nearly put my blade in Vartas’s balls! By the Harvester, child, get your head out of your policy book and into the moment!”
Then Miljin stopped and stooped over a rent he’d carved in the floor. With the flick of his sword, he turned the rent into a square hole about three span wide. Then he squatted over it, reached into the hole, and slid out a bronze box.
“Here we go,” he said. “Here we go, here we go, here we go…” He studied it. “No lock, no graft trips…”
“Graft trips?” I asked.
“A fungus or something what grows in the crack, so when it’s opened improperly it releases a toxin…” He rapped on it. “This is just a box. And what’s inside it…”
He flicked it open. Inside was a small bed of moss, and lying upon that, a very strange contraption.
It was a small, circular, intricately engraved bronze plate, with five tiny glass vials embedded in it, each one containing fluids of many different colors. Miljin frowned at it, then sniffed it, and grunted, “Well, I’ll be fucked.”
“What is it, sir?”
“It’s a reagents key.”
A flutter in my eyes. I recalled Princeps Otirios back in Daretana, taking out a small glass vial sloshing with black fluid and saying—You’ll need to follow close, sir. This gate is a bit old. Can be fussy.
“For vinegates and the like?” I asked.
“Yeah…but I’ve never seen one like this before. Five different reagents? Whatever portal or path this is for, it must be one of the most secure places on earth.” He stood, grimacing. “Let’s check another room.”
We went to the quarters of Signum Jilki, Topirak’s lover. Again, the flicker-flash of the green sword. Another bronze box—this one hidden in a wall—and inside, another reagents key, this one the same as with Loveh.
