The Tainted Cup, page 22
“True.” Miljin bowed to him theatrically. “Your record and bravery are beyond reproach. But that is why you’ve no great augmentations—yes, Captain?”
Strovi’s face colored slightly. “Miljin…”
“Too many augmentations makes it damned hard to engender children,” said Miljin to me, offhandedly. “And the Strovi clan has every intention of extending their line, of course.”
“Damn it, Miljin,” snapped Strovi. “Mind your own affairs!”
I cleared my throat. “Perhaps,” I said, “it’d be better if we focused on the case at hand…”
Miljin snorted and gazed at the hills before us. “The case, yes…Though I grow pessimistic. If the gentry is tangled up in this, Kol, things shall get tricky fast.”
Dawn bloomed in the east, and I began to see what he meant: atop the hills before us were many enormous, fine houses, gabled and bedecked with mai-lanterns and encircled by high fretvine walls. Many featured tall bird-perch gates before the houses—ceremonial, double-beamed structures wrought of wood and painted bright red. I had heard of them before, and was aware they indicated gentryhood, and the emperor’s favor. They were so closely entwined with the gentry that the symbol of them was often painted on gentry contracts: two perpendicular lines with two sloping, arched lines running between them. I was frankly awed by the sight of them, and the grand houses behind them.
Miljin spat on the ground. “You can smell the money in the air here. Blow your nose and talints shall come tumbling out.”
We continued walking along the gentry road. Tall walls ran on either side of us, fencing off the gentrylands. Each one was paired with a main gate—a common construction of wood and iron—as well as a reagents gate, allowing servants to come and go at any hour. I approached these carefully, my reagents key held out. They were amazing constructions in their own right, often made of twisted roots or flowering fungi or coils of vines, all awaiting the proper key, and the proper signal.
But not the one I bore. Though we walked along the gentry road until the sun broke free of the horizon, none of the reagent gates opened to me.
“Odd to say this failure brightens my mood,” muttered Miljin. “I hope we walk this street and find naught at all.”
Then Strovi spoke, in a strangled voice: “There is one gate remaining.”
Miljin looked at him, puzzled. Then his expression gave way to horror. “Titan’s taint. I pray it isn’t…”
I saw the gate ahead. It was enormous and towering, a huge, curious, coiling root that plugged up the opening in the wall, layered with tendrils of bright yellow vines and dotted with green growths.
I approached it slowly, the Engineers’ reagents key held out before me. The vines trickled, twitched. The massive root trembled. And then, as if it were a living knot, the whole thing slowly unwound, falling away, leaving the entry clear, and through the rounded gap I glimpsed dark green hills, and there in the distance a many-gabled house that was nothing short of palatial, standing amid tall, white-trunked trees that shone in the light of the dawning sun.
How familiar it felt. Almost the same as that day in Daretana when I had gone to see Blas’s body.
My eye fell upon the bird-perch gate before the house, and the insignia painted there: a feather standing between two tall, white trees.
My eyes fluttered. I had engraved that sight within my memory mere weeks ago.
It felt the same as that day in Daretana, I realized—because in many ways it was the same.
“By hell,” muttered Strovi. “The halls of the Hazas…The Engineers were meeting there?”
“Of all the fucking places,” Miljin said grimly, “it just had to be this one.” He spat on the ground. “That damned house sees more important people than the Senate of the Sanctum. We are about to go dallying in the affairs of the mighty, friends.”
But though they seemed surprised, I found I was not. It all felt very obvious, now that I thought of it.
I recalled what Ana had said to me just after arresting Uxos: Blas was in bed with the Hazas…and the Hazas definitely have a foothold in the capital of the canton, in Talagray. If we follow this all the way, it may take us there.
“She knew,” I said.
“What?” said Strovi.
“She knew where it had happened,” I said. I turned and strode away, and the reagents gate closed behind me. “She has known all along.”
CHAPTER 23
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THE INVESTIGATION ROOM IN the Iudex tower hadn’t gotten any cleaner in the last few days. If anything, it had gotten filthier, the reek of pipe smoke overpowering, the very air quaking with the fumes of clar-tea. As I staggered back into the room it hardly felt better than the fernpaper mill, shadowy and swimming with corpse-stink.
Uhad, Nusis, and Kalista all looked up at me as I reentered. Only Ana did not, lounging in her chair with a cup of wine in her lap, her expression brimming with barely restrained satisfaction. I hoped she could feel the glare I gave her.
“Well, Signum?” sighed Uhad. “Did you find anything?” His shivering eyes danced over me, then Miljin, then Strovi, taking in our expressions. “I rather think you did…”
I bowed and said, “Would you like the whole testimony, sir?”
“Of course.”
I started speaking, summoning up each memory, each turn in the road, each gate we tried—rather slowly, since I had not anchored the experiences with a scent—until I finished my tale.
But as I finished, the atmosphere in the room changed, and the three immuni—red, blue, and purple—all reacted.
Nusis’s usual helpful smile flickered, then melted, replaced by a look so grave it was like I was reporting her own death. Uhad put his cup of tea down far too hard, spilling the steaming black fluid over Kalista’s pile of parchments. Kalista herself coughed in the middle of a puff of her pipe, then spasmed, spilling the smoking weed over the table, where it died with a hiss in the spilled tea.
Then all was still. The only sound was the drips of tea on the floor. Ana’s triumphant smirk slowly faded as well, and she swiveled her head around as the silence continued.
She began to look alarmed. So I began to feel alarmed.
“You think…you think the Engineers were poisoned at the home of the Hazas?” said Uhad faintly.
He looked aghast. I wondered what to say. I had expected this news to be taken poorly, but not this poorly.
“And you’re sure this took place eight days before the breach?” said Kalista. She looked terrified. “The killer did the poisoning there? On that day? At that party?”
“Ahh. Party, ma’am?” I said, confused.
“Kalista…” said Nusis quietly.
I glanced at Strovi, who looked baffled. Miljin, however, looked bleakly amused.
Kalista stood up. “Should…should I get tested?” she cried. “Is there a test? I mean…Hell, do I have those spores growing in me now?”
“Kalista, if you’d been poisoned at the party, we would have known by now!” said Nusis.
“You mean I’d be dead now!” said Kalista.
“Well, yes, obviously!”
“But we don’t know how it works!” squawked Kalista. She clutched her clay pipe so hard it snapped in two. “We don’t know why it…why it took so long with the other Engineers! And oh, Sanctum, I’m an Engineer! They probably tried to do it to me, too, didn’t they?”
Uhad’s eyes shivered. He thoughtlessly lifted his empty cup of tea with one shaking hand and tried to drink from it. “I can recall…recall no staining of fernpaper during the occasion…No steam at all, surely…”
“I feel short of breath!” shouted Kalista.
“Kalista!” snapped Nusis. “Will you listen?”
“I feel a…a stiffness in my lungs, in my person, I…”
Ana stood up and clapped her hands twice, very hard. Everyone fell silent.
Then she stared around at them, turning to each of their faces despite being blindfolded. “So,” she said. “I take it there was an event of some kind at the halls of the Hazas, on this eighth night before the breach. A party. Yes?”
They all nodded.
I cleared my throat and said, “They have nodded, ma’am.”
“I see,” said Ana. “And…and all three of you were in attendance at this party? Do I have that correct?”
Kalista was so flustered she descended into frantic mutterings. But Uhad sighed and reluctantly said, “True. Yes. If only for a moment…”
“But we didn’t see any of those Engineers there!” said Nusis quickly. “If we had, we’d obviously have mentioned it!”
“Correct,” said Uhad. “Many of the upstanding members of the Iyalets were present at the Haza affair, not just us. And attendance is not uncommon. The gentry hold many events. Officers can decline some, but not all—and especially not those of the Hazas.”
“Specifics!” snapped Ana. “How many people came to this party? And during what times?”
“A hundred people or more,” said Kalista. “And it lasted hours.”
“Yet these Engineers were not present, of that I am sure,” said Uhad.
“How are you sure?” demanded Ana.
“We’ve been studying these people’s lives for the past days!” said Uhad with a sniff. “I would know if they’d been there!”
“But are you all even aware, Uhad,” she thundered, “of what the dead Engineers looked like?”
“I…I remember names!” said Uhad, affronted. “And I always make sure to get them, given my role.”
“And if they gave false names?” said Ana. “What then?”
“What is the nature of your tone here, Ana?” Uhad demanded. “It’s not like you think we killed those Engineers at this party?”
“I’ve no idea what to think!” said Ana. “But are you not cognizant, all of you, that you now seem to be witnesses to not only the poisoning and murders of ten Engineers, but also the inciting act that caused the greatest calamity of the recent imperial era? Have you not realized what this means?”
Another long, baleful silence.
“At the very least,” said Ana wearily, “it means we now have to get Commander-Prificto Vashta directly involved.”
Everyone looked shocked, myself included. We had not yet encountered something grave enough to call her in from her duties as seneschal of the canton.
“Why?” said Uhad.
“Because as I said, you are witnesses!” said Ana. “You cannot investigate yourselves! Nor can you question yourselves! Especially not if you all are seen to be in pretty good relations with the owners of the house where these people were originally poisoned!” She looked over her shoulder. “Miljin!”
“Yes, ma’am?” he said.
“Go with young Strovi here to tell Vashta we have urgent news. We will need her input to decide how to move further. Move quickly now! We must form a plan of action as fast as we can.”
CHAPTER 24
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COMMANDER-PRIFICTO VASHTA SAT IN her chair at the front of the Iudex adjudication chamber, her gray-peppered hair twinkling in the lamplight. I hadn’t seen her since that first night in Daretana, but she looked much as I’d remembered: tall, serious, austere, draped in Legion black, watching us keenly like a scribe-hawk studying a mouse.
But then Ana talked. And talked. And as she did, Vashta seemed to age before my very eyes, so much that her back grew bent and her face appeared to blossom with lines.
Finally Ana finished. A silence stretched on.
“I see,” said Vashta softly. “Thank you for your report, Immunis.”
No one spoke. The commander-prificto simply sat in her chair, blinking as she tried to process all this.
“This…” Vashta’s eyes searched the seats, then stared out the windows, as if hoping to find someone who could help. “This…this is nothing short,” she proclaimed, “of a fucking disaster.”
Her words echoed off the fretvine walls and the wood-paneled seats while Ana, Miljin, and I looked on. This chamber was where the Iudex of the canton determined the sentences of its criminals; and though we had done no wrong, I couldn’t help but feel that all three of us were about to be punished.
“Four quakes,” said Vashta drearily. “Four quakes we’ve recorded recently, all over the past week. Do you understand what this indicates? A leviathan approaches. It churns its way now through the mud and soil of the sea deeps. It shall attack in the next seven days, perhaps less.”
“Dreadful.” Ana’s head bobbed up and down like a claydove walking about a town square. “Awful.”
“To survive the wet season,” said Vashta, “we need the Engineers to be functional. We need Talagray to be functional. We need all the complex little behaviors it takes to maintain the walls and the bombards and the Legion to keep on whirring and clunking along. And yet…and yet, you tell me now that not only are we no closer to identifying who killed those ten Engineers, but that almost the entire investigation team is now compromised. Because, the poisoning likely took place in a home of one of the most powerful clans in all the Empire! Right as all my investigators were apparently sipping their sotwine nearby!” A horrified pause. “I mean, I…I thought you were tracking the Engineers to some secret meetings, Dolabra, or some such devilry?”
“We were, ma’am,” said Ana.
“But now you think the Engineers were having these secret meetings at the halls of the Hazas? At their gentry estate? And this last secret meeting occurred during some sort of party?”
“That is as it seems, ma’am,” said Ana. “The dead Engineers possessed reagents keys to the Haza gates. I think they were there that day of the Haza party, and that that is where they were poisoned. But how and why, I’m not sure.”
The muscles in Vashta’s jaw rippled as she gritted her teeth. “Miljin—I feel stupid asking this, but you can testify that you at least weren’t there, correct?”
“Wasn’t there, ma’am,” Miljin said. “Don’t get invited to fancy gentry parties. P’rhaps on account I lost my dancing shoes.”
“That’s a damned blessing, then. You are permitted to keep working this, then.” Vashta’s hands crawled along the surface of her engraved helm in her lap. “Sen sez imperiya,” she muttered. “The workings of the Empire must be honest and straightforward. For if the Empire does not work for one, it does not work for all—and then it cannot work to keep the leviathans back.” She glared at Ana. “Well. You’ve done a very good job here, Immunis!”
The bobbing of Ana’s head increased. “Thank you, ma’am.”
“You have not only identified the likely time and location of the crime—again, all within a few days—but you have managed to utterly unravel any faith I had in the Iyalets in this canton,” she said bitterly. “Quite stunning work! As such, I am hoping you can continue to do stunning work.”
Ana’s fingers flittered in her dress. She knew what was coming. “Of course, ma’am,” she said.
“You shall take over as lead investigator,” said Vashta. “You must begin by questioning Uhad, Nusis, and Kalista immediately. We must get all their testimony right away.”
“Certainly,” said Ana.
“Good. And there’s nothing else you haven’t told me yet, is there?” asked Vashta. “You don’t have some other magic reagents key that might open…hell, I don’t know, the emperor’s undergarment drawer?”
There was an awkward silence. I glanced back at Miljin, who looked on, uncomprehending.
“Well…” said Ana.
“You don’t,” Vashta said flatly.
“I’m afraid we do, ma’am,” said Ana. “We have found a second key.”
“I was joking!” cried Vashta. “I’ll joke no more, if the gods shall hear them as wishes and make them true! Where did you find it?”
Ana then explained all I’d found in Rona Aristan’s safehouse. Vashta grew more and more agog with every word, and Miljin looked first outraged and then resigned to hear that we’d all got to it first.
“I always did hear,” he muttered as he shook his head, “that working with Dolabra will drive a man mad…”
“Do we have any idea how Blas came into all that money?” demanded Vashta. “And how does that relate to his murder, and the murder of all the other Engineers?”
“We don’t yet know, ma’am.”
“And you’re certain this malign influence doesn’t spread to any of the other investigators?”
“At the moment, all their involvement seems ill-advised but coincidental, ma’am.”
“And what in hell does this new reagents key open?”
“We don’t yet know that either, ma’am,” said Ana. “It appears far plainer than the Haza key, so I doubt if it shall open anything quite so controversial, but…we have given it to Nusis to analyze. I have not yet heard if she has had time to work on it.”
Again, Vashta glowered at us. “Get an update from her when you interrogate her next. We must uncover as much as we can about all of this as quickly as possible.”
“Understood, ma’am,” said Ana. “But…first, of course…”
“The Hazas,” sighed the commander-prificto. “You would like to go to their home, I assume.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And inspect the residence.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And get lists of all their guests and relations present.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And, surely, talk to all their servants and advisers. Like they were simple country folk.”
“That would be most preferable, ma’am.”
I almost scoffed. Ana could be quite unctuous when attempting humility.
“I have fought back leviathans for five wet seasons,” said Vashta quietly. “But at least the titans are straightforward. Yet the gentry…That is another matter.” She fixed Ana again in a cold, steely gaze. “I will do what I can. But I wish you to know this.”
