The Tainted Cup, page 2
“You didn’t handle that murder last year? The sotted guard who attacked the fellow at the checkpoint?”
I felt something tighten in my cheek. “The Iudex Investigator position was created here only four months ago.”
“Oh, I see, sir. But you didn’t work any death inquiries with your investigator at your previous station?”
The muscle in my cheek tightened further. “When the investigator arrived here,” I said, “I was selected from the other local Sublimes to serve as her assistant. So. No.”
There was the slightest of pauses in Otirios’s stride. “So…you have only worked for an Iudex Investigator for four months, sir?”
“What’s the point of this, Princeps?” I asked, irritated.
I could see the smirk playing at the edges of Otirios’s mouth again. “Well, sir,” he said. “Of all the death cases to be your first, I wouldn’t much like it being this one.”
He opened the door.
* * *
—
THE CHAMBER WITHIN was a bedroom, as grand as the rest of the house, with a wide, soft mossbed in one corner and a fernpaper wall and door separating off what I guessed was the bathing closet—for though I’d never seen a bathing closet inside a house, I knew such things existed. A mai-lantern hung in the corner; in the corner diagonal from it, another kirpis shroom. Beside it were two trunks and a leather satchel. Commander Blas’s possessions, I guessed.
But the most remarkable feature of the room was the clutch of leafy trees growing in the center—for it was growing from within a person.
Or rather, through a person.
The corpse hung suspended in the center of the bedchamber, speared by the many slender trees, but as Otirios had said it was initially difficult to identify it as a body at all. A bit of torso was visible in the thicket, and some of the left leg. What I could see of them suggested a middle-aged man wearing the purple colors of the Imperial Engineering Iyalet. The right arm was totally lost, and the right leg had been devoured by the swarm of roots pouring out from the trunks of the little trees and eating into the stonewood floor of the chamber.
I stared into the roots. I thought I could identify the pinkish nub of a femur amid all those curling coils.
I looked down. An enormous pool of blood had spread across the floor, as smooth and reflective as a black glass mirror.
A flicker in my stomach, like it held an eel trying to leap out.
I told myself to focus, to breathe. To stay controlled and contained. This was what I did for a living now.
“It’s safe to approach, sir,” Otirios said, a little too cheerily. “We’ve inspected the whole of the room. Worry not.”
I stepped closer to look at the greenery. They weren’t really trees, but some kind of long, flexible grass—a bit like shootstraw, the hollow, woody grass they used to make piping and scaffolding. The thicket of shoots appeared to have emerged from between Blas’s shoulder and neck—I spied a hint of vertebrae trapped within them and suppressed another pang of nausea.
Most remarkable was Blas’s face. It seemed the shoots had grown multiple branches as they’d emerged from his torso, and one had shot sideways through Blas’s skull, bending his head at an awful angle; yet the branch had somehow enveloped his skull above the upper jawline, swallowing his face and his nose and ears. All that was left of Blas’s skull was his lower jaw, hanging open in a silent scream; and there, above it in the wood, a half ring of teeth and the roof of a mouth, submerging into the rippling bark.
I stared at his chin. A whisper of steely stubble; a faint scar on the edge from some accident or conflict. I moved on, looked at the rest of him. Left arm furred with light brown hair, fingers calloused and crackling from years of labor. The leggings on the left leg were stained dark with blood, so much so that it had pooled in his boot, filling it like a pot of sotwine.
I felt a drop on my scalp and looked up. The shoots had punched through the roof of the house, and the morning mist was drifting inside in dribs and drabs.
“Sticks out about ten span past the top of the house, if you’re curious, sir,” said Otirios. “Shot through four span of roofing like it was fish fat. So—a pretty big growth. Never seen anything like it.”
“How long did this take?” I asked hoarsely.
“Less than five minutes, sir. According to the servants’ testimony, that is. They thought it was a quake, the house shook so.”
“Is there anything the Apoths have that can do this?”
“No, sir. The Apothetikal Iyalet has all kinds of grafts and suffusions to control the growth of plants—succus wheat that ripens within a quarter of a season, for example, or fruits that grow to three or four times their conventional size. But we’ve never made anything that can grow trees within minutes…or one that can grow from within a person, of course.”
“Have we got any reason to believe it was intended for him?”
“Inconclusive, sir,” said Otirios. “He’s Engineering, moves around a good bit. Could be he accidentally ingested something during his travels or contaminated himself. There’s no way to tell yet.”
“Did he visit anyone else in town? Or meet any other infected official, or imperial personnel?”
“Doesn’t seem so, sir,” said Otirios. “It appears he departed from the next canton over and came straight here without meeting anyone.”
“Has there ever been a record of any contagion like this?”
A contemptuous pucker to his lips. “Well. There are contagions all over the Empire, sir. Suffusions and grafts and alterations growing wild…Each one is different. I’d have to check.”
“If it is contagion, it should spread, correct?”
“That’s…the nature of contagions, sir?” said Otirios.
“Then how did it happen to this one man, and nothing and no one else?”
“Hard to say at this point, sir. We’re checking Blas’s movements now. He was on a tour of the outer cantons, including the sea walls, reviewing all the construction. The, ah…” He hesitated. “…The wet season is coming soon, after all.”
I nodded, stone-faced. The coming of the wet season hung over the outer cantons of the Empire so heavily that ignoring it would be like trying to forget the existence of the sun.
“No one visited the room before Blas arrived?” I asked. “Or touched anything?”
“The servants did, of course. We only have their testimony to rely on there.”
“And no signs of attempted entry?”
“No, sir. This place has more wardings than the Emperor’s Sanctum itself. You’ve got to have reagents keys just to get close.”
I considered this silently, recalling the number of windows and doors in this house.
“It’ll be a fine thing if you can explain it, sir,” Otirios said.
“What?” I said.
“A fine thing for a career.” Another smile, this one somewhat cruel. “That’s what you want, right, sir? Advancement? It’s what any officer would want, I’d imagine.”
“What I want,” I said, “is to do my duty.”
“Well, of course, sir.”
I looked at him for a moment. “Please give me a moment, Princeps,” I said. “I will need to engrave the room.”
* * *
—
OTIRIOS LEFT ME standing alone before the tree-mangled corpse and shut the door. I reached into my engraver’s satchel on my side and opened it up. Within sat row after row of tiny glass vials sealed with corks, each one containing a few drops of fluid: some pale orange, others faintly green. I slid one out, removed the cork, placed it beneath my nose, and inhaled.
The pungent scent of lye filled my nostrils, making my eyes water. I sniffed it once again, ensuring that the aroma lay heavy within my head. Then I shut my eyes and took a breath.
I felt a tickling or a fluttering in the backs of my eyes, like my skull was a bowl of water full of fish flicking about. Then I summoned up a memory.
The voice of my master, the investigator, whispered in my ear: When you arrive at the scene, Din, observe the room carefully. Check all manners of entry and exit. Look at everything the dead man might have touched. Think of missed places, forgotten places. Places the servants might not think to clean.
I opened my eyes, looked at the room, and focused, the aroma of lye still loitering in my skull. I studied the walls, the floor, the way every item and every piece of furniture was arranged, the line of every shadow, the bend of every blanket—and as I focused my attention, all of these sights were engraved in my memory.
The great and heavenly Empire of Khanum had long ago perfected the art of shaping life, root and branch and flesh and bone. And just as the kirpis shroom in the corner had been altered to cool and clean air, I, as an Imperial engraver, had been altered to remember everything I experienced, always and forever.
I looked and looked, occasionally sniffing at the vial in my hand. Engravers remembered everything, but later recalling those memories quickly and easily was another thing. Scent was used as a cue: just like ordinary folk, engravers associated memories with an aroma; so later, when I reported to my master, I would uncork this same vial, fill my skull with these same vapors, and use their scent as a gateway to recall all I’d experienced. Hence why some called engravers “glass sniffers.”
When I was done with the room I stepped forward and squinted at the clutch of shoots, walking around them in a circle. Then I noticed one shoot had bloomed: a lonely, fragile white bloom, but a bloom nonetheless.
I stepped closer, mindful of the blood on the floor, and studied the bloom. It had a sickly aroma, that of sotwine vomit, perhaps. Inner petals bright purple and dappled with yellow, stamen curling and dark. An ugly little flower, really.
Next I took out all of Blas’s belongings one by one and laid them out before me. A bag of talint coins; a small knife; a set of shirts, jerkins, leggings, and belt; his imperial-issued longsword and scabbard, complete with the ornate crossguard for officers; a light mail shirt, probably for emergencies, as real battle armor would be difficult to casually carry about; and, last of all, a small pot of oil.
I sniffed it. It was aromatic, even in this foul-smelling place. Spice, oranje-leaf, wine mullings, maybe incense. My eyes fluttered as I searched my memories for a matching smell—and then I found something similar.
Just over a year ago: Leonie, a friend of mine, had waved a little pot under my nose and said—Therapy oils. For massage, and other things. Not cheap!
Yet this was a far fancier pot than that had been. I turned it over in my hand. Then I replaced it with his gear—yet as I did, I noticed something I’d missed: a small book.
My heart fell. I slipped the slender volume out and flipped through the pages. The pages were covered with tiny writing that would have been barely legible to most people—but to my eyes, the letters danced and shook on the page, and I knew I would have great trouble reading them.
I looked over my shoulder at the closed door. I could hear Otirios speaking down the hall. With a grimace, I pocketed the book. It was a major breach of conduct to remove evidence from a death scene, but I had my own way of reading. I just couldn’t do it here.
Later, I told myself. And then we’ll put it back.
Next I checked the bathing closet. It was a tiny room with a window set above the stonewood bathing basin. The window seemed too small for anyone to climb through, but I made a note to examine the grass below later for any imprints.
I looked at the burnished bronze mirror on the bathing closet wall, tapping it and making sure it was adhered to the wall. I examined the shootstraw pipes, then stepped back and gazed at the wall and ceiling, wondering how they brought hot water in from the distant boiler to fill the stonewood basin. The marvels of the age, I supposed.
Then I glanced backward and did a double take. Mold was blooming along the fernpaper walls, mostly at the top—little blotches of black here and there.
I’d never seen fernpaper walls mold before. I especially wouldn’t have expected to find any on these walls, so clean and white and processed. People used fernpaper throughout the Outer Rim of the Empire, partially for their resistance to molds and fungus—and also because when the ground shook out here, and walls came tumbling down, it was better for them to be made of fernpaper than stone.
I studied the mold and sniffed the lye vial again, ensuring that this sight was easily recallable. Then I looked at the body again, this half person frozen in an agonized scream. A drop of water fell from the hole in the ceiling and landed in the lip of his boot, sending a tiny fan of pooled blood dribbling down the leather. The lake of gore on the wooden floor widened by a shred of a smallspan.
A twist in my stomach. I stood and looked at the burnished bronze mirror. Then I froze, staring at the face looking back at me.
A very young man’s face, with a thick shock of black hair, dark, worried eyes, and the slightly gray skin of someone who’d undergone significant suffusions and alterations. I studied the face’s delicate chin and long nose. Pretty features—not masculine, nor rugged, nor handsome, but pretty, and how awkward they looked on a person so large.
Not the face of an Iudex Assistant Investigator. Not someone who was supposed to be here at all. A boy playing dress-up at best, aping authorities he could never hope to command.
And what would happen to this young man if anyone found out how he’d actually gotten this position?
My stomach twisted, twirled, danced. I dashed to the bathing closet window, burst through it, and sent a spray of vomit pattering down to the grass below.
A voice said, “Fucking hell!”
Gasping, I looked down. Two Apoth officers were staring up at me from the gardens, shocked looks on their faces.
“Ahh…” one said.
“Shit,” I spat. I stumbled back in and shut the window behind me.
* * *
—
NOT HAVING A handkerchief, I wiped my mouth on the inside of my coat. I sniffed and swallowed three, four, five times, trying to suck the rancid taste and aroma back inside me, bottling it up. Then I stepped carefully around the puddle of blood, went to the bedroom door, and opened it to leave—but then I paused.
Otirios’s voice floated down the hall, chatting with another Apoth guard.
“…stuffy little prick, barely out of puberty,” he was saying. “Think I’ve heard of him, from the other Sublimes. Supposed to be the dumbest one of the lot, nearly failed out a hundred times. I’m surprised to find him working for the investigat—”
I walked forward, fast. “Princeps,” I said.
Otirios stumbled to attention as I strode around the corner. “Ah—y-yes, sir?”
“I’m going to review the house and the grounds before I speak to the witnesses,” I said. “While I do that, please place the witnesses in separate rooms and then watch them, to ensure they don’t talk among themselves. I’d also like your other guards to make sure the exits and entrances are covered—just in case there’s an unaccounted reagents key and someone tries to slip in or out.”
Otirios blanched, clearly displeased at the idea of managing so many people for so long. He opened his mouth to argue, then grudgingly shut it.
“And Princeps…” I looked at him and smiled. “I do appreciate all your support.”
I was still smiling as I walked out. I had never given such an order before, but I’d enjoyed that one. For while I couldn’t really rebuke Otirios—he was part of another Iyalet, a different imperial administration—I could stick him with a shit job and leave him there for a long while.
I walked throughout the mansion, occasionally sniffing my vial as I studied each hallway, each room, the insignia of the Haza clan always hanging over my shoulder at the door—the feather between the trees.
The Hazas were able to afford a kirpis shroom for every major room, it seemed, but the one in the western end by the kitchens was shriveled and dying. Curious. I made a note of it, then kept moving, checking all the windows and doors—mostly fernpaper, I noticed. All milled bright white, and each probably worth more than a month’s pay for me.
I crossed through the kitchens, then spied something below the stove: a tiny blot of blood. I touched it with a finger. Still wet, still dark. There might be many reasons for blood to be in a kitchen, of course, but I engraved it in my memory. Then I went outside.
The gardens were very pretty and elaborate: landscaped streams crisscrossing the grounds, little bridges arching over them in picturesque places. A sight from a spirit story for children, perhaps; yet I didn’t find anything of interest as I wandered the paths, nodding occasionally at the Apoths still searching for contagion.
I came to the place where I’d vomited out the window and searched the grass for any indentions or marks of a ladder or something similar. Nothing there, either.
The last thing to look at was the groundskeeper’s hut. It was a quaint place, made of thin fernpaper walls, the shelves dotted with tiny plants the groundskeeper was apparently nursing along. Lines of merry little blooms, some fresh, some wilting. There was also a clay oven, quite large. I peered inside and noticed the ash in the bottom, then touched the brick there and found it was still slightly warm, like coals had been smoldering overnight.
I made another trip about the grounds to confirm I’d seen all there was to see. Then I glanced around, confirmed I was alone, and slid the commander’s book from my pocket.
I opened it, squinted at the shivering, dancing words on the page, and began to read aloud.
“Wall s-segment…3C,” I mumbled. “Check d-date the fourth of Egin…two t-tons sand, two tons loam…”
I read on and on, stuttering through the tiny script, and listened to my voice as I read. I had great trouble reading and memorizing text, but if I read it aloud, and listened to my own words, I could remember them as I could everything else I heard.
I felt something tighten in my cheek. “The Iudex Investigator position was created here only four months ago.”
“Oh, I see, sir. But you didn’t work any death inquiries with your investigator at your previous station?”
The muscle in my cheek tightened further. “When the investigator arrived here,” I said, “I was selected from the other local Sublimes to serve as her assistant. So. No.”
There was the slightest of pauses in Otirios’s stride. “So…you have only worked for an Iudex Investigator for four months, sir?”
“What’s the point of this, Princeps?” I asked, irritated.
I could see the smirk playing at the edges of Otirios’s mouth again. “Well, sir,” he said. “Of all the death cases to be your first, I wouldn’t much like it being this one.”
He opened the door.
* * *
—
THE CHAMBER WITHIN was a bedroom, as grand as the rest of the house, with a wide, soft mossbed in one corner and a fernpaper wall and door separating off what I guessed was the bathing closet—for though I’d never seen a bathing closet inside a house, I knew such things existed. A mai-lantern hung in the corner; in the corner diagonal from it, another kirpis shroom. Beside it were two trunks and a leather satchel. Commander Blas’s possessions, I guessed.
But the most remarkable feature of the room was the clutch of leafy trees growing in the center—for it was growing from within a person.
Or rather, through a person.
The corpse hung suspended in the center of the bedchamber, speared by the many slender trees, but as Otirios had said it was initially difficult to identify it as a body at all. A bit of torso was visible in the thicket, and some of the left leg. What I could see of them suggested a middle-aged man wearing the purple colors of the Imperial Engineering Iyalet. The right arm was totally lost, and the right leg had been devoured by the swarm of roots pouring out from the trunks of the little trees and eating into the stonewood floor of the chamber.
I stared into the roots. I thought I could identify the pinkish nub of a femur amid all those curling coils.
I looked down. An enormous pool of blood had spread across the floor, as smooth and reflective as a black glass mirror.
A flicker in my stomach, like it held an eel trying to leap out.
I told myself to focus, to breathe. To stay controlled and contained. This was what I did for a living now.
“It’s safe to approach, sir,” Otirios said, a little too cheerily. “We’ve inspected the whole of the room. Worry not.”
I stepped closer to look at the greenery. They weren’t really trees, but some kind of long, flexible grass—a bit like shootstraw, the hollow, woody grass they used to make piping and scaffolding. The thicket of shoots appeared to have emerged from between Blas’s shoulder and neck—I spied a hint of vertebrae trapped within them and suppressed another pang of nausea.
Most remarkable was Blas’s face. It seemed the shoots had grown multiple branches as they’d emerged from his torso, and one had shot sideways through Blas’s skull, bending his head at an awful angle; yet the branch had somehow enveloped his skull above the upper jawline, swallowing his face and his nose and ears. All that was left of Blas’s skull was his lower jaw, hanging open in a silent scream; and there, above it in the wood, a half ring of teeth and the roof of a mouth, submerging into the rippling bark.
I stared at his chin. A whisper of steely stubble; a faint scar on the edge from some accident or conflict. I moved on, looked at the rest of him. Left arm furred with light brown hair, fingers calloused and crackling from years of labor. The leggings on the left leg were stained dark with blood, so much so that it had pooled in his boot, filling it like a pot of sotwine.
I felt a drop on my scalp and looked up. The shoots had punched through the roof of the house, and the morning mist was drifting inside in dribs and drabs.
“Sticks out about ten span past the top of the house, if you’re curious, sir,” said Otirios. “Shot through four span of roofing like it was fish fat. So—a pretty big growth. Never seen anything like it.”
“How long did this take?” I asked hoarsely.
“Less than five minutes, sir. According to the servants’ testimony, that is. They thought it was a quake, the house shook so.”
“Is there anything the Apoths have that can do this?”
“No, sir. The Apothetikal Iyalet has all kinds of grafts and suffusions to control the growth of plants—succus wheat that ripens within a quarter of a season, for example, or fruits that grow to three or four times their conventional size. But we’ve never made anything that can grow trees within minutes…or one that can grow from within a person, of course.”
“Have we got any reason to believe it was intended for him?”
“Inconclusive, sir,” said Otirios. “He’s Engineering, moves around a good bit. Could be he accidentally ingested something during his travels or contaminated himself. There’s no way to tell yet.”
“Did he visit anyone else in town? Or meet any other infected official, or imperial personnel?”
“Doesn’t seem so, sir,” said Otirios. “It appears he departed from the next canton over and came straight here without meeting anyone.”
“Has there ever been a record of any contagion like this?”
A contemptuous pucker to his lips. “Well. There are contagions all over the Empire, sir. Suffusions and grafts and alterations growing wild…Each one is different. I’d have to check.”
“If it is contagion, it should spread, correct?”
“That’s…the nature of contagions, sir?” said Otirios.
“Then how did it happen to this one man, and nothing and no one else?”
“Hard to say at this point, sir. We’re checking Blas’s movements now. He was on a tour of the outer cantons, including the sea walls, reviewing all the construction. The, ah…” He hesitated. “…The wet season is coming soon, after all.”
I nodded, stone-faced. The coming of the wet season hung over the outer cantons of the Empire so heavily that ignoring it would be like trying to forget the existence of the sun.
“No one visited the room before Blas arrived?” I asked. “Or touched anything?”
“The servants did, of course. We only have their testimony to rely on there.”
“And no signs of attempted entry?”
“No, sir. This place has more wardings than the Emperor’s Sanctum itself. You’ve got to have reagents keys just to get close.”
I considered this silently, recalling the number of windows and doors in this house.
“It’ll be a fine thing if you can explain it, sir,” Otirios said.
“What?” I said.
“A fine thing for a career.” Another smile, this one somewhat cruel. “That’s what you want, right, sir? Advancement? It’s what any officer would want, I’d imagine.”
“What I want,” I said, “is to do my duty.”
“Well, of course, sir.”
I looked at him for a moment. “Please give me a moment, Princeps,” I said. “I will need to engrave the room.”
* * *
—
OTIRIOS LEFT ME standing alone before the tree-mangled corpse and shut the door. I reached into my engraver’s satchel on my side and opened it up. Within sat row after row of tiny glass vials sealed with corks, each one containing a few drops of fluid: some pale orange, others faintly green. I slid one out, removed the cork, placed it beneath my nose, and inhaled.
The pungent scent of lye filled my nostrils, making my eyes water. I sniffed it once again, ensuring that the aroma lay heavy within my head. Then I shut my eyes and took a breath.
I felt a tickling or a fluttering in the backs of my eyes, like my skull was a bowl of water full of fish flicking about. Then I summoned up a memory.
The voice of my master, the investigator, whispered in my ear: When you arrive at the scene, Din, observe the room carefully. Check all manners of entry and exit. Look at everything the dead man might have touched. Think of missed places, forgotten places. Places the servants might not think to clean.
I opened my eyes, looked at the room, and focused, the aroma of lye still loitering in my skull. I studied the walls, the floor, the way every item and every piece of furniture was arranged, the line of every shadow, the bend of every blanket—and as I focused my attention, all of these sights were engraved in my memory.
The great and heavenly Empire of Khanum had long ago perfected the art of shaping life, root and branch and flesh and bone. And just as the kirpis shroom in the corner had been altered to cool and clean air, I, as an Imperial engraver, had been altered to remember everything I experienced, always and forever.
I looked and looked, occasionally sniffing at the vial in my hand. Engravers remembered everything, but later recalling those memories quickly and easily was another thing. Scent was used as a cue: just like ordinary folk, engravers associated memories with an aroma; so later, when I reported to my master, I would uncork this same vial, fill my skull with these same vapors, and use their scent as a gateway to recall all I’d experienced. Hence why some called engravers “glass sniffers.”
When I was done with the room I stepped forward and squinted at the clutch of shoots, walking around them in a circle. Then I noticed one shoot had bloomed: a lonely, fragile white bloom, but a bloom nonetheless.
I stepped closer, mindful of the blood on the floor, and studied the bloom. It had a sickly aroma, that of sotwine vomit, perhaps. Inner petals bright purple and dappled with yellow, stamen curling and dark. An ugly little flower, really.
Next I took out all of Blas’s belongings one by one and laid them out before me. A bag of talint coins; a small knife; a set of shirts, jerkins, leggings, and belt; his imperial-issued longsword and scabbard, complete with the ornate crossguard for officers; a light mail shirt, probably for emergencies, as real battle armor would be difficult to casually carry about; and, last of all, a small pot of oil.
I sniffed it. It was aromatic, even in this foul-smelling place. Spice, oranje-leaf, wine mullings, maybe incense. My eyes fluttered as I searched my memories for a matching smell—and then I found something similar.
Just over a year ago: Leonie, a friend of mine, had waved a little pot under my nose and said—Therapy oils. For massage, and other things. Not cheap!
Yet this was a far fancier pot than that had been. I turned it over in my hand. Then I replaced it with his gear—yet as I did, I noticed something I’d missed: a small book.
My heart fell. I slipped the slender volume out and flipped through the pages. The pages were covered with tiny writing that would have been barely legible to most people—but to my eyes, the letters danced and shook on the page, and I knew I would have great trouble reading them.
I looked over my shoulder at the closed door. I could hear Otirios speaking down the hall. With a grimace, I pocketed the book. It was a major breach of conduct to remove evidence from a death scene, but I had my own way of reading. I just couldn’t do it here.
Later, I told myself. And then we’ll put it back.
Next I checked the bathing closet. It was a tiny room with a window set above the stonewood bathing basin. The window seemed too small for anyone to climb through, but I made a note to examine the grass below later for any imprints.
I looked at the burnished bronze mirror on the bathing closet wall, tapping it and making sure it was adhered to the wall. I examined the shootstraw pipes, then stepped back and gazed at the wall and ceiling, wondering how they brought hot water in from the distant boiler to fill the stonewood basin. The marvels of the age, I supposed.
Then I glanced backward and did a double take. Mold was blooming along the fernpaper walls, mostly at the top—little blotches of black here and there.
I’d never seen fernpaper walls mold before. I especially wouldn’t have expected to find any on these walls, so clean and white and processed. People used fernpaper throughout the Outer Rim of the Empire, partially for their resistance to molds and fungus—and also because when the ground shook out here, and walls came tumbling down, it was better for them to be made of fernpaper than stone.
I studied the mold and sniffed the lye vial again, ensuring that this sight was easily recallable. Then I looked at the body again, this half person frozen in an agonized scream. A drop of water fell from the hole in the ceiling and landed in the lip of his boot, sending a tiny fan of pooled blood dribbling down the leather. The lake of gore on the wooden floor widened by a shred of a smallspan.
A twist in my stomach. I stood and looked at the burnished bronze mirror. Then I froze, staring at the face looking back at me.
A very young man’s face, with a thick shock of black hair, dark, worried eyes, and the slightly gray skin of someone who’d undergone significant suffusions and alterations. I studied the face’s delicate chin and long nose. Pretty features—not masculine, nor rugged, nor handsome, but pretty, and how awkward they looked on a person so large.
Not the face of an Iudex Assistant Investigator. Not someone who was supposed to be here at all. A boy playing dress-up at best, aping authorities he could never hope to command.
And what would happen to this young man if anyone found out how he’d actually gotten this position?
My stomach twisted, twirled, danced. I dashed to the bathing closet window, burst through it, and sent a spray of vomit pattering down to the grass below.
A voice said, “Fucking hell!”
Gasping, I looked down. Two Apoth officers were staring up at me from the gardens, shocked looks on their faces.
“Ahh…” one said.
“Shit,” I spat. I stumbled back in and shut the window behind me.
* * *
—
NOT HAVING A handkerchief, I wiped my mouth on the inside of my coat. I sniffed and swallowed three, four, five times, trying to suck the rancid taste and aroma back inside me, bottling it up. Then I stepped carefully around the puddle of blood, went to the bedroom door, and opened it to leave—but then I paused.
Otirios’s voice floated down the hall, chatting with another Apoth guard.
“…stuffy little prick, barely out of puberty,” he was saying. “Think I’ve heard of him, from the other Sublimes. Supposed to be the dumbest one of the lot, nearly failed out a hundred times. I’m surprised to find him working for the investigat—”
I walked forward, fast. “Princeps,” I said.
Otirios stumbled to attention as I strode around the corner. “Ah—y-yes, sir?”
“I’m going to review the house and the grounds before I speak to the witnesses,” I said. “While I do that, please place the witnesses in separate rooms and then watch them, to ensure they don’t talk among themselves. I’d also like your other guards to make sure the exits and entrances are covered—just in case there’s an unaccounted reagents key and someone tries to slip in or out.”
Otirios blanched, clearly displeased at the idea of managing so many people for so long. He opened his mouth to argue, then grudgingly shut it.
“And Princeps…” I looked at him and smiled. “I do appreciate all your support.”
I was still smiling as I walked out. I had never given such an order before, but I’d enjoyed that one. For while I couldn’t really rebuke Otirios—he was part of another Iyalet, a different imperial administration—I could stick him with a shit job and leave him there for a long while.
I walked throughout the mansion, occasionally sniffing my vial as I studied each hallway, each room, the insignia of the Haza clan always hanging over my shoulder at the door—the feather between the trees.
The Hazas were able to afford a kirpis shroom for every major room, it seemed, but the one in the western end by the kitchens was shriveled and dying. Curious. I made a note of it, then kept moving, checking all the windows and doors—mostly fernpaper, I noticed. All milled bright white, and each probably worth more than a month’s pay for me.
I crossed through the kitchens, then spied something below the stove: a tiny blot of blood. I touched it with a finger. Still wet, still dark. There might be many reasons for blood to be in a kitchen, of course, but I engraved it in my memory. Then I went outside.
The gardens were very pretty and elaborate: landscaped streams crisscrossing the grounds, little bridges arching over them in picturesque places. A sight from a spirit story for children, perhaps; yet I didn’t find anything of interest as I wandered the paths, nodding occasionally at the Apoths still searching for contagion.
I came to the place where I’d vomited out the window and searched the grass for any indentions or marks of a ladder or something similar. Nothing there, either.
The last thing to look at was the groundskeeper’s hut. It was a quaint place, made of thin fernpaper walls, the shelves dotted with tiny plants the groundskeeper was apparently nursing along. Lines of merry little blooms, some fresh, some wilting. There was also a clay oven, quite large. I peered inside and noticed the ash in the bottom, then touched the brick there and found it was still slightly warm, like coals had been smoldering overnight.
I made another trip about the grounds to confirm I’d seen all there was to see. Then I glanced around, confirmed I was alone, and slid the commander’s book from my pocket.
I opened it, squinted at the shivering, dancing words on the page, and began to read aloud.
“Wall s-segment…3C,” I mumbled. “Check d-date the fourth of Egin…two t-tons sand, two tons loam…”
I read on and on, stuttering through the tiny script, and listened to my voice as I read. I had great trouble reading and memorizing text, but if I read it aloud, and listened to my own words, I could remember them as I could everything else I heard.
