The Tainted Cup, page 32
And as he guided me through the movements, I began to see what they had been trying to show me: every gesture, every position, every shift, and every turn seemed to sink into my very bones, engraved in my body and flesh—but the knack was as limited as it was comprehensive, for I could only duplicate those exact movements. If the fight called for something I hadn’t memorized, then I was instantly vulnerable.
“Good,” said Miljin, sweating mightily after a few minutes of sparring. “But don’t let this swell your ego. None of these dirty tricks will do you any good against a twitch, or a crackler. Try and spar with him tomorrow and the fella will rip you apart. Now let us sup, and to bed. There are many ways to an early grave in this canton, and pairing a hungry belly with a tired mind is surely one of them.”
He walked me back to the Iudex tower entrance, the Fisher’s Hook twinkling and glimmering far above.
“Do you think she meant it, sir?” I said. “That someone will try to poison her?”
“At this point, if your immunis claimed all the world were an aplilot and a giant leviathan was about to take a bite out of it, I’d fucking believe her,” he said. He squinted up at the Iudex tower. “In fact, I wonder if she knows the truth of all that’s happened. Or if she even planned to be here.”
“What do you mean, sir?”
“An Iudex officer with such a history with the Hazas? Popping up right when Kaygi Haza gets murdered? She knows more than she’s telling. Question is when she tells us.”
“As well as if we survive,” I said. “That question bothers me a bit more now, sir.”
“True,” he said. “But that’s as Talagray is. The fields of these lands are wet with the blood of many officers. And though we keep hoping the Empire grows more civilized, somehow it finds clever new ways to stay savage. Yet you’ve an advantage, Kol.”
“Because of my knack?”
“No. Because Dolabra’s decided to look out for you. Though she’s mad, count yourself lucky to be in her shadow.”
“I’m in danger because I’m in her shadow, sir.”
He laughed. “Suppose that’s a good point!”
We walked on. It was a queer thing, to know I had this knack; but any excitement I had was drowned in dread of all the threats before us. It was all too easy to imagine some shadowy figure lifting a stiletto to my skull and drilling a hole behind my ear, leaving a tiny, trickling spring of dark blood.
Finally we came to the tower entrance.
“It’s a defect as much as it is an advantage, you know,” Miljin said, “or they used to say so.”
“Pardon, sir?”
“Memory in the muscles, I mean.” He squinted at me. “Apparently it only happens to engravers who have trouble engraving other shit—or so I’m told. The duelist I mentioned, he couldn’t remember songs at all. Not a bit of them. They were like a big blank space in his mind. Couldn’t whistle or tap his foot, neither. I guess it’s like everything else in the Empire—there’s always a trade-off.”
He waited for me to say something, but I did not speak.
“But you seem a keen sort,” he said. “Suppose you just got lucky, Kol.”
Then he told me good night, turned, and stomped off to his quarters.
CHAPTER 33
| | |
THE NEXT MORNING MILJIN and I met the Apoths’ contagion crew at the Talagray stables. There were six of them—four women, two men—all wearing curious armor of leather and glue-like grass that appeared to seal off their whole beings from the air, except for the heads. The leader of the group, a tall woman with a steely gaze, shook Miljin’s hand and introduced herself. “Signum Kitlan. Told we’re here to deal with contagion, possibly out in the Plains of the Path—that right, sir?”
“That’s right, Signum,” Miljin said.
“Can you tell me more about this contagion?”
“It’s a plant being used by an Apoth and a crackler. A spore, I’m told. Breathable. Similar to dappleglass.”
None of them seemed surprised or even intimidated by this. They just nodded, eyes flinty. They were so altered their faces were more purple than gray, and some of them bore strange scars on their faces and necks, patches of puckered white from some injury or another. They were easily the hardest-looking officers I’d ever seen.
“Where are we starting, sir?” Kitlan asked Miljin.
Miljin waved to me. My eyes fluttered as I recalled Ana’s briefing from early this morning, her teeth gleaming in a grin as she’d pronounced: One! There is only one crackler in service to the Legion stationed here in Talagray who hails from Oypat. A Militis Drolis Ditelus, stationed at a forward outpost close to the walls. And he’s had quite a lot of demerits recently. Can you guess what for?
I assume not for poisoning various imperial peoples with dappleglass, ma’am, I’d said.
To which she’d responded: Don’t be smug. No. He’s apparently been wandering off to do fuck knows what out in the Plains of the Path when he’s supposed to be at the wall. Fellow’s in deep shit, really! He has to be our man.
I relayed this information to the Apoths as we geared up to ride out, along with how dappleglass functioned: fertile and infectious when exposed to steaming water, but after its horrid bloom, it was safe. Again, they did not react.
“We find this crackler, this Drolis Ditelus,” said Kitlan. “He takes us to this traitor Apothetikal, and we find the contagion there and destroy it—that it, sir?”
“If it proves that simple,” Miljin said, “I’ll be overjoyed. But yes.”
She spat so profusely on the ground that Miljin looked impressed. “We’ll make it simple.”
We mounted up and started east, across the Plains of the Path, the same road we took to the medikkers’ bay just a few days ago. Our progress was soon blocked, however, for the road east was suddenly packed with teams of beasts—horses, oxen, and giant slothiks—all hauling something toward the walls. Or rather pieces of something, something enormous. At first I thought it was perhaps some kind of piping, huge and curving and carried on massive carts, but then I realized I was wrong.
It was a bombard. Segments of a bombard, slowly making its way toward the distant sea walls. A bombard so huge and so complex my mind could hardly grasp it.
“Huh,” I said aloud. “A titan-killer. Just like Captain Strovi said.”
“It’ll be devilish hard to get to this crackler with all that ahead,” growled Miljin. “We’ll have to cut across country. Come on.”
Our horses were none too pleased with the change in terrain, which made the going much slower. But as midmorning changed to midday we finally approached the forward Legion outpost, which much like the road was crawling with movement.
I studied the scene as we arrived. Panic hung heavy in the air. Legionnaires darted about with hurried, fraught movements, like people readying for some desperate escape. We reined our horses at the front gate and stalked inside, and after a few moments of Miljin’s hollering we were brought to the princeps of the outpost.
“Ditelus, sir?” she said. “You’re looking for him? Hell, get in line. I’d love to find him, too.”
“He’s missing?” asked Miljin.
“Yes. Again! With the quakes so hard that the mud dances at our feet, and the titan-killer churning up the road out there. I shall behead the bastard when I find him again.” The princeps paused to look us over. “If Iudex is looking for him, though, then he’s done something serious…” She looked back at Kitlan and her people, impatiently waiting behind us. “And you’ve a contagion crew with you?”
“We need to know where he is immediately,” Miljin said to her. “Is there anyone who worked with him who might know?”
She shook her head. “Everyone’s off to assist with the bombard. Engineers say the titan’ll be here in a matter of days, maybe hours. Ditelus’s whole cohort is long gone.”
I looked at the princeps, thinking. It had been weeks since I’d last interrogated a princeps—the smirking Otirios, back in Daretana—but it suddenly came to me easier now, with death and madness rumbling past the horizon.
“You’re Ditelus’s commanding officer?” I asked.
“I’m the operating officer of this outpost, yes, sir,” she said.
“So you would have been the one to write up his demerits?”
“Ah—yes? The Iudex manages demerits now?”
“He was marked for absences, correct?” I said. “Did you ever catch him coming back to the outpost after his absence?”
“I did, a couple of times.”
“What direction might he have been coming from?” I asked. “And is there anything out there?”
She fetched a map and pointed to the spot. “He was coming from the west, back toward Talagray. There used to be an old Legion fortress that way, decades ago, but it got destroyed during a breach. Killed a titan and it fell right on top of it. Some Legionnaires used to sneak out to the ruins to get sotted back in my day. You think he’s there?”
“Much thanks, Princeps,” said Miljin curtly.
We left, mounted our horses, and departed, pausing only for Miljin to give me the tiniest nod—Well done.
* * *
—
“WE’RE IN A bad stretch of land now,” warned Kitlan as we rode. “You see anything moving that isn’t grass or leaves, don’t go near. The Plains are rife with contagion. Worm pits and nests and hives abound. This whole bit of world wishes to eat you.”
“Are we allowed to be here?” I wondered aloud.
“Allowed?” Kitlan snorted contemptuously. “No one bothers to fence off these lands, Signum. You’d have to be a fool to traipse in thoughtlessly.”
I didn’t argue. We’d entered a strange part of the Plains, with giant hills rising on either side of us covered in tussocks of thick, yellow grass—the remains of dead leviathans, surely, felled by the Legion decades if not centuries ago. There were so many hills that I began to wonder why we still called it the “Plains of the Path” at all. Much of this place had to be of higher elevation than the rest of the canton.
More disturbing still were the flowers on the ground about us. None were alike. There were blooms shaped like cups and funnels and rosettes and bells; some were huge and pendulous, others tiny as fleas; and in the deeper parts of the hills, where the rainwater gathered, the blooms grew as thick as the stars, yet all were of different colors, whorls of pink and orange and purple.
The sights did not cheer me, for I knew the ground here had long soaked in the otherworldly blood of the leviathans. Dappleglass no longer seemed such an uncommon threat.
I started glancing over my shoulder toward the east every few miles, looking up at the sky.
“What you looking for, Kol?” asked Miljin.
“Flares, sir,” I said. “Just in case.”
He laughed roughly. “Warning flares? That won’t matter, lad.”
“How might you mean, sir?”
“I mean, if we see red or yellow in the sky, it won’t matter. We’re too close to run. We’ll just be dead. So look forward, boy, and not back.”
I did as he asked, counting the hills about us as we passed. I’d memorized the princeps’s map, but it hadn’t been totally accurate regarding the number of carcasses about. Yet I knew we were getting close to the ruins of the fort.
Then one of the Apoths cried out: “Scent! Got scent!”
Kitlan wheeled her horse around to him and demanded, “What kind?”
“Blood, ma’am.” The Apoth raised his face and sniffed the air again—his nose was large and violet-hued—and pointed south. “That way.”
We followed the Apoth until he stopped at what appeared to be an undistinguished patch of meadow. But he pointed down, and I saw a large splotch of blood resting among the rocks.
“Wet,” said Miljin. “And fresh. But is it Ditelus’s?”
“Don’t know, as we don’t have his scent,” said the tracker Apoth. He pointed south. “But I smell more that way.”
We wheeled about and headed south.
* * *
—
WE FOUND HIM within an hour.
He was easy to spy, a huge, shambling, shifting form just on the horizon, trudging south. Yet even though we were still so far from him, I could see there was something amiss.
The figure in the distance didn’t move right. He limped. Staggered. Hobbled along, like he’d broken many bones in his feet, perhaps.
Miljin sensed it, too. “Don’t like this,” he muttered. “Something’s wrong. Is that really him? Where’s he going? And what’s he running to?”
“Could have worms,” mused Kitlan.
“You goddamned Apoths always think it’s worms.”
“That’s because so many people have so many fucking worms.”
Kitlan and Miljin led the way, spurring their horses on but pursuing the figure carefully. When we were a quarter of a league away, Kitlan raised a hand for us to stop. Then she and her people pulled bizarre, complex helmets from their packs: the helms had glass bubbles for eyes and were conical in shape, giving them a wasplike appearance, and they ended in what looked like a small brass grate that was packed with moss.
“Warding helms?” I asked.
“Yes,” Kitlan said. “Uses suffused mosses and materials to filter out contagion. It will keep us safe as we approach.” Then she tossed one to me. “It buckles about the neck.”
I pulled mine on and buckled it. The world grew muffled and hot and dark immediately, and I had to squint through the glass bubbles to see. I hoped I didn’t wander off blindly and get lost out here among all the horrors about me.
Kitlan waved a hand and we proceeded, gaining on the distant figure hobbling across the wretched wilderness. As we grew closer I came to comprehend the size of the person we were following. He was enormous, nearly as tall as one and a half of me, and as wide as three of me standing shoulder to shoulder—and I was no small person. His black-clad back was as broad as a carriage, and his feet made tremendous thumps as he staggered across the Plains, his giant boots churning up the grass and mud before him.
And he was bleeding. From something on his front. I could see the blood dribbling down from between his knees, rills of dark red threading over his thighs.
We rode on until we were within fifty span of him. Then Miljin bellowed through his mask: “Ditelus! Hold!”
The crackler didn’t stop moving. He just kept hobbling on.
“Stop where you are, damn you!” said Miljin. “By order of the Imperial Iudex, I command you to stop!”
He did not stop.
“Militis,” said Kitlan in a warning voice. “We are here from the contagion crew. If you don’t comply, and if we can’t determine your state, we will have to set you alight. It’s up to you if you’re alive or dead while you burn.”
Still, he did not stop.
We all looked at one another. Then we spurred our horses on until we were alongside Ditelus, though we rode at a safe distance.
Unlike his body, the crackler’s face was surprisingly normal. His pale gold hair was cropped close to his dark, sun-tanned scalp, and his eyes were small and sad. Blood poured from his lips down his chin and his neck, soaking through his black shirt and dribbling between his legs. He wheezed and gasped as he walked, his massive lungs gurgling and clicking with each breath. Every now and again his face spasmed with pain, like he was putting weight on some bone broken within his foot.
“Ditelus! Where is Captain Kiz Jolgalgan?” demanded Miljin. “Is she here?”
The crackler said nothing. He just shambled on, his giant boots making a thump-thump.
“Where have you been? What have you done?”
He said nothing.
“Did you help her break into the halls of the Hazas?”
Still nothing.
Then, sighing, Miljin asked, “Ditelus…where are you going, man?”
For a while Ditelus kept hobbling on. Yet then he answered in a soft, curious, high-pitched voice, whispering, “H-home.”
“You’re going home?”
“Yes,” he gasped. Blood flew from his lips with the word.
Miljin looked ahead. “There’s naught but wall in this direction, son.”
“I…I am going home,” whispered Ditelus. His face shook with pain. “To the g-green fields of beans, and…and yellow fields of wheat I once knew.” He blinked hard, and tears began running down his cheeks, carving cloudy lines through the blood. “Air hazy with pollen in early spring. And th-the forests thick with leaves just after, and then heavy with d-dark fruit.” As he limped on, his body began to shake, and he wept. “I shall be there soon.”
“The hell is he talking about?” said Kitlan.
“Oypat,” I said quietly. “I think he’s describing Oypat.”
“Y-yes,” whispered Ditelus. “It was my home. Yet it is dead, and…and I go to join it. I will wander those lands in this next world. And w-what…what a joyous thing that will be.”
Then he stopped, arms limp at his side. His whole body was quaking now.
“Captain Miljin,” said Kitlan lowly. “Get away. Get clear.”
“They took it from us,” wept Ditelus. “Let it die. Made it die.”
“What do you mean?” Miljin demanded. “Who did?”
“And then her…He did it to her, I…I…He did it to her, didn’t he?” Ditelus said helplessly. “Didn’t he?”
“Who?” demanded Miljin. “Jolgalgan? Is that who you mean? What’s happened?”
“Miljin!” said Kitlan, louder. “Get away! Something’s wrong!”
She was right. Something was moving at Ditelus’s breastbone. Something twitching and curling, under his shirt.
