The Tainted Cup, page 29
She allowed a silence as Miljin and I absorbed this.
“This, of course, is only conjecture,” she said. “But I feel it’s close to the mark, given what you’ve told us, Din…” A savage grin. “The Hazas seek something—an object, or evidence. Perhaps they seek this third. But what it actually is, I don’t think Fayazi is permitted to know. Fascinating!”
“Maybe something to do with the ten Engineers,” said Miljin. “Being as Fayazi lied to Kol here about that—and he faced down a fucking court plaizaier to prove her wrong.”
I wiped sweat from my face as I struggled to free my mind of that memory. “But I still don’t understand why the ten Engineers would have been there at all,” I said. “Why would Kaygi Haza invite such low officers into his estate?”
Ana laughed gaily. “Oh, that’s simple. The answer is patronage.”
“Patronage?” I said. “As in—giving gifts?”
“Right,” grunted Miljin. “Though it sounds like Kaygi Haza was giving them a hell of a lot more than gifts, though…”
“Aptly put,” said Ana. “The man must’ve been operating here for years. All these bright young officers coming to Talagray for acclaim and attention…and Kaygi gave it to them, putting them on the high road to better positions, better projects. All they had to do was give him information, or do small favors for him…or a big one, perhaps.” She trailed off, as if struck by a thought.
“Like Blas, ma’am?” I said.
“What?” she said, startled.
“It sounds like the treatment the Hazas gave Blas. But he was far older, and his treatment seemed special.”
“Hm. Yes…” she said quietly. “It did, didn’t it?”
Miljin snorted. “But we’re still missing lots of pieces. Patronage ain’t exactly illegal—being as it’s the gentry who have a lot of say in making the laws. We’ve also got no real indication of what Kaygi Haza was actually up to, or how Jolgalgan got to him. Unless Uhad, Nusis, and Kalista give us something useful when we interview them tomorrow—which I somewhat doubt they will.”
“No…” said Ana. “But, Din—there is one thing that’s missing. Tell me, were you unable to get into the Haza rookery at all?”
I hesitated, a lump of ice wedged between my ribs. No avoiding it now.
“I did, ma’am,” I said. “But the Hazas had burned all of the household’s correspondence, claiming a fear of contagion.”
“Damn…” muttered Miljin.
Yet Ana shot forward. “But you didn’t stop there, did you, Din? Surely not.”
I took a breath, trying to suppress the dread fluttering in my throat.
“I didn’t,” I said. “I reviewed all the scribe-hawks of the Hazas, trying to see which locations they were in communication with—as well as which locations had recently sent a message, or received one.”
Miljin stared in astonishment, then cackled. “By hell! Finding out which places the Hazas were watching and listening to? That’s a damn coup, that is!”
Yet Ana cocked her head, sensing the hesitation in my words. “What’s the problem?”
“The problem,” I said slowly, “is that the locations were all written in Sazi.”
“Sazi?” said Ana, surprised. Then she sat back, jaw set. “Ah…”
“Ah?” said Miljin, puzzled. “Why ah?”
Ana was silent for a moment. “Sazi, Captain,” she finally explained, “is one of the trickiest languages to learn—especially in writing. I am Sazi myself, and know the tongue and the letters. But besides Sublime linguas, I’ve never known a soul who’s managed the feat.”
“But…but if you’re Sazi, ma’am,” said Miljin, “and if Kol here’s an engraver, he can just write the letters out for you to read and translate, yes?”
A heavy silence hung in the air.
I watched Ana anxiously. Her blindfolded face had gone inscrutable, but her posture was tense, like a cat about to spring.
“I mean—right?” said Miljin again.
“Captain,” she said suddenly. “Please give me a moment with Din alone.”
Again, Miljin’s brows furrowed, and he glanced at me. But he nodded, stood, and left.
* * *
—
ANA WAITED UNTIL her door clicked shut.
“So.” She turned to me. “What’d you get?”
“S-sorry, ma’am?” I said, surprised.
“What did you get, Din?” she demanded. “I know you came away with something. I can hear it in your voice. So—what?”
I thought for a moment, took a breath, and said, “I, ah, found four messages sent to four different locations, and one received, ma’am.”
“And?”
“And…I struggled with the Sazi, as you suggested, ma’am.” I fought to keep my voice from shaking. “So rather than try to memorize the letters or say them aloud, I…I traced them with my finger, and tried to memorize the movements to hopefully re-create them here for you.”
There was a long, awkward silence. I waited. Any moment now, I knew, Ana would demand to know the reason for this bizarre choice; and then she’d come to know of my afflictions with text, learn of all the work I’d done to hide this secret, and have me discharged from the Iyalet and sent home without a talint in my pocket.
But instead, Ana cheerily said, “Oh! Well. That should do perfectly, yes?”
I blinked. “P-pardon, ma’am?”
“Memorizing the movements should do very well,” she said. She took off her blindfold and began puttering around the room, sifting through parchments. “We just need an ink vial and some papers. Should be simple.”
I felt myself blushing. “But…ma’am. I am unsure if I’ll be able to write what I trace—”
“Yes, but you’re not going to write it, boy. I mean, you didn’t write it back there, did you? We just need to duplicate your movements exactly. You traced them with your finger, and that is what we shall do again.”
She set a sheet of parchment on the table, then opened an inkpot and placed it before me. “Now. Just dip your finger in there, Din—just a bit—and sniff your vial, shut your eyes, and move your finger as you did back in the rookery. Let us see what your movements re-create.”
I stayed still, unable to quite comprehend what was going on. Did she really have no questions for me? Did she not find my inability suspicious?
Then she snapped, “Now, Din! Now! I’ve not got all night! Put your damned finger in the damned ink, child!”
Feeling both bewildered and ridiculous, I dipped my finger lightly in the inkpot, placed the nail to the parchment, shut my eyes, and smelled my vial of mint.
Memories unscrolled in my mind.
The rustlings of the birds. The smell of straw and the dappling of slanted light.
I felt my muscles move my arm, my hand, and my finger.
It was queerly like the fight outside Suberek’s mill: my body reacted with a will of its own, shifting about as it mimicked the memory. I felt like a man possessed from a fairy story; but rather than being possessed by a spirit, I was possessed by a split second of my own past.
I finished writing and opened my eyes. There upon the page was a very, very messy string of letters—but to my own surprise, they were very close to the string of Sazi text I’d seen below the first pair of scribe-hawk cubbies back at the rookery.
Ana leaned over my shoulder, peering at it. “Fascinating…”
“Can you read it, ma’am?” I asked.
“I think so…” she said. “It is quite outrageously sloppy, but it looks like it says—The Engineering Headquarters of the Mitral Canton.”
I stared at the page, then up at her. “Truly?”
“Truly! You have done your duty, Din. We just need to do a little more. Come now—summon up your other memories of the other plates and bits of text, and let us learn who else the Hazas communicated with after the death of Commander Blas.”
I did the others the same way, each time on a new piece of parchment, duplicating the remaining three locations of the sent messages. They were:
The Engineering Headquarters of the Bekinis Canton
The Apothetikal Headquarters of the Qabirga Canton
The Engineering Headquarters of the Juldiz Canton
Together we studied the names of the four places, slightly mystified. Yet then one canton name suddenly sounded very familiar to me.
I summoned up the memory, my eyes fluttering. “Bekinis…” I said softly. “And Juldiz.”
Ana grinned. “Yes, Din?”
“These…these are the cantons Blas’s secretary was visiting,” I said. “The ones noted in the wall pass I found in that empty house, with all that money.”
“Correct, Din! And isn’t that fascinating?” Her grin grew wider. “It does make one think.”
“But what’s the connection, ma’am? Why would the Hazas send their letters there?”
“Oh, I have ideas. Many of them. And all of them will require further verification.”
There was a tense pause.
“Perhaps the location that sent a message to Kaygi Haza will reveal more?” I said.
“Mm, I rather doubt it,” she said. “But we should look anyway.”
I did the trick again, writing with my finger with my eyes shut, then opening them.
“As I thought,” said Ana. She squinted at my writing, then read, “The Haza Prime Hall, First Ring, Sazi Lands. In other words, the Hazas’ home here in Talagray got a message from the elder brothers of the Haza family very soon after Kaygi Haza’s death. Meaning Fayazi’s Sublime lied to you—they’ve probably gotten lots of letters from the senior lineage since the old bastard sloughed off his sandals. Not surprising.”
“So what does that mean?”
“Isn’t it obvious? It means whatever secret Kaygi was rushing to keep secret commanded the attention of the senior clan.” She grinned wickedly. “So it must be one hell of a big fucking secret, eh, Din?” Then she cocked her head. “Mitral, Bekinis, Qabirga, and Juldiz…I wonder what connects them to the Hazas? And Blas, and Oypat, and all those silver coins you found.”
* * *
—
WHEN WE WERE done, Ana replaced her blindfold and called Miljin back into the room to share these revelations.
“Any chance these cantons mean anything to you?” Ana asked him at the end. “Mitral, Bekinis, Qabirga, or Juldiz?”
Miljin frowned as he thought. “Think I rode through Qabirga once. Lots of farms. And it rained. A lot.” He shrugged. “ ’S’all I got, ma’am.”
“Hm. Rather less than useful…” said Ana.
“I note we don’t have any conclusions regarding the actual murder, though, ma’am,” said Miljin. “How Jolgalgan got in to poison Kaygi Haza’s bath, or the ten dead Engineers…And the fire, and the hole in the ground on the Haza property. Don’t have much there, yes?”
“We have more than we think,” said Ana. “I believe I have one solid idea, at least. We’ve been wondering how Jolgalgan snuck poison into the halls of the Hazas, yes? Well—what if she secreted herself in with it? For I suspect it’s very likely that she infiltrated the Haza grounds and buried herself in that little hole for a day, or two, or more, waiting for the party.”
There was a short, stunned silence.
“Truly?” said Miljin.
My eyes fluttered as I summoned the image of the little hole up in my mind. “That could work…” I whispered. “It was large enough, yes. Then when she heard the music and talking, she could just stand up, slip out, brush herself off, and join the crowd.”
“And when the party was done,” said Ana, pleased, “she’d just leave with them.”
“But how could she navigate the servants’ passageways up to the roof?” asked Miljin. “They were close, cramped, and dark.”
“Well, Jolgalgan is an Apoth,” said Ana. “And we know Apoths have a fondness for self-alteration. When Nusis went to go look at Suberek’s corpse, remember, you asked if she needed a lantern.”
Again, my eyes fluttered as I remembered the moment. “But Nusis said she could see perfectly well in the dark,” I said.
“Yes,” said Ana. “Admirably simple, isn’t it?”
“It’s…interesting,” said Miljin. “But not watertight. Still don’t know how Jolgalgan got on the grounds in the first place, ma’am.”
“We don’t!” Ana said chipperly. “But I have a theory, though it will need researching. That’s where you come in, Captain. Would you please go about getting a list of recent Talagray Legion personnel, please? I would like especially for you to focus on enhanced individuals. Enhanced for strength, specifically—much like yourself.”
“ ’Course, ma’am,” said Miljin.
“Good. I think we have a lot to parse through—but tomorrow, Din, you and I shall get more. For we must interview those we once called colleagues, to hear what they saw at this party. Perhaps they saw our killer in action—and witnessed something that may be useful to us.” Then she paused and turned to me. “But Din…one last thing.”
“Yes, ma’am?” I said wearily.
“When you first came to the Hazas’ property, you asked how big it was.”
“Yes?”
“And then you asked how big the dead titan had been, the one they’d taken the claw from.”
“Yes, ma’am?”
“Am I correct in believing that the axiom—the Sublime enhanced to process calculations—said nothing to any of this? She voiced no numbers at either time?”
“Ah…no, ma’am. She did not.”
Ana’s fingers fluttered in her dress. “And on Fayazi’s arm. You spied paint there, as if to conceal bruising. Like someone had gripped her arm very tight.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Interesting…” whispered Ana. “That is all. I simply wished to confirm. You may go, and sleep.”
We thanked her, exited, and departed for our rooms, as it was very late in the evening by now.
It wasn’t until I’d undressed and laid my head on my pillow that I realized Ana had not commented at all upon my issues with text. Not once. Before I could think on it further, the tower shifted and creaked below me, my eyes fell shut, and I slept.
CHAPTER 31
| | |
“TELL THE HAZAS?” SAID Kalista. Her manicured eyebrows mounted her forehead. “About the investigation? Of course I didn’t.”
Ana leaned sideways in her chair in the arbitration room, her blindfolded head bent at an angle as the morning sun crept into the arbitration room. I stood behind her, my face carefully circumspect.
“Why not?” Ana asked politely. “Why wouldn’t you?”
Kalista laughed dully, her new clay pipe pinched in her fingers before her mouth. Again, I was reminded of a plump little purple courtesan dove, this one perhaps attempting to smooth its feathers after a fright.
“Well, it’s not like I’m a close friend of Fayazi or some such,” Kalista said. “Not like we have tea and gossip over which Legionnaire has the shapeliest thighs.” Her smile dimmed. “Certainly wouldn’t expect them to talk to me during…Well. All that’s happened.”
I glanced at Ana, who did not react. Word of Kaygi Haza’s murder had spread quickly throughout the city. It was no surprise that Kalista had caught wind of it.
“But you did mention it to someone,” said Ana, in tones of tremendous sympathy. “Perhaps there was someone else at the party you wished to contact…just to confirm their well-being.”
A quiver to Kalista’s oysterdusted eyelids. “Well,” she said grudgingly. “I was concerned about Commander Hovanes. Of the Apoths.”
Ana waited patiently. I stood behind her, hands behind my back, listening and watching.
“He was my…companion for that evening,” Kalista admitted. “And he is a friend. I did wish to notify him that…that we had discovered a potential threat to his health.”
“And is he,” asked Ana, “acquainted with the Hazas?”
“I was his guest,” said Kalista. “He was the one invited to the affair. So, yes. I would say so. More than I, at least.”
Ana nodded, plainly pleased to have determined the source that had tipped off the Hazas to all our discoveries. “I see. Now! Why don’t you describe the party, Kalista?” Ana said. “Your movements, who you saw, and when you saw them.”
Kalista began to speak. I listened, sniffing the vial scented of mint, engraving every word.
She arrived at midday, she said, and had been searched at the gates by the guards and exposed to the estate’s many telltale plants. Having proven unarmed and untouched by all contagion, she and Commander Hovanes had been permitted to enter the grounds, pass through the winding walkway between the white trees and the bird-perch gate, and approach the party.
“Yet to call it a party,” Kalista said, smiling, “is to call a war a spat!” This hadn’t been a convivial gathering over wine and mussels, she told us: it was akin to a high imperial ceremony, an almost celestial orchestration of art, food, music, and company, like something out of the ancient days.
Pipers placed at the front steps, their music low and sultry. Banners and ribbons waving at the doorways. Fires of green and silver flickering in every hearth. “And then there was the food,” she sighed. “And the wine. And the air…For some chambers held moodblooms. Just tarrying in the smokes of those plants for a moment made the very feeling of time change…If the Khanum still walked these lands, they’d have expected to be greeted similarly.”
“Very nice,” said Ana dryly. “But the people, Kalista. Did you see many people?”
“Oh, of course!”
She gave us the names of the people she saw. Most of her testimony consisted of gossip she’d heard; a parade of half-remembered, half-sotted conversations that had been half drowned out by the pipers. She only saw Nusis and Uhad fleetingly.
