The Tainted Cup, page 38
* * *
—
I FETCHED A spyglass from a Legionnaire, and together we walked to the eastern part of the city, which was by now abandoned by the fleeing crowds. We came to a high earthworks rampart facing east, the noon sky yawning bright and clear and beautiful above, and in the distance rose the sea walls, just the barest thread of black running along the horizon.
“What do you see, Din?” Ana whispered.
I pressed the spyglass to my eye and peered out.
I saw the walls, tall and black and buffeted by earthworks. A whole landscape, it seemed, ripped from the earth and placed against the sea; and there, to the south, a narrow, ragged gap, and all about it lay broken stones and heaps of crumbled soil. Yet that was all I could see.
“It has not come yet, ma’am,” I said.
“Hm…the waiting is the awful part,” she said. “I’ve prepared to die many times in my life. I did last night, as I made my trap. I did this morn, as I poisoned my own rooms. Perhaps it is a wise thing, to prepare for death every day, just as the Empire prepares for death every wet season.”
I glanced at her. “You could have told me she was a twitch, ma’am.”
“I could have,” Ana said. “But I didn’t want you to try something gallant and stupid. Better to let the Legionnaires take her, I thought. There were enough of them. If only the bells had not rung, giving her a chance to escape…”
“And then,” I said, “I had to go and do something gallant and stupid anyway.”
“Yes. It shall take work to keep you alive, boy. A pity we might perish today, for you are an honorable officer, Dinios Kol. It would have been a fine thing, to rely on you further in my works. We could have done many great things together.”
A rumbling in the east. The crackle of bombard fire.
A thought occurred to me. One I did not much like, but one I felt I had to obey.
I swallowed. “W-would you say, ma’am,” I said softly, “that now would be the hour for honesty and confessions?”
“I…suppose?” she said. “What makes you say that?”
I was silent.
“Do you have something to confess, Din?” she asked.
“Yes, ma’am. I do.”
“And what might that be?”
I swallowed again. “I confess I…I am no honorable officer, ma’am.”
“How do you mean?”
I shut my eyes. “I should not be your assistant. For I…I did not achieve my scores on my Iudex exams honestly, ma’am. My scores were fraud.”
Ana said nothing. The bombards crackled on.
“I had failed every other Iyalet application,” I said. “I have great trouble reading and writing. And the position with you was the only one I could hope for. So I…I learned how to pick locks, ma’am. That was why I learned such a thing. I learned it to break into the Apoth’s offices at night. I stole copies of the Iudex exams. All of them, for I didn’t know which one I would be given. Once I had the chance to read them the…the way I do my reading, I saw that I knew the answers, but I had to practice writing them. So…I spent three days memorizing how to draw the letters. How to put the sentences together. Remembering the movements. That was how I made such high scores, ma’am. My trainer knew and beat me for it. And I deserved it. And I have felt like a trespasser here every day, because…because I am a trespasser. I am no honorable officer, ma’am. And I am sorry for deceiving you. If we survive the day, I shall accept what punishments you choose. For I tire of hiding my nature from you. I have no appetite for this sin.”
I opened my eyes. Ana was staring at me, her blindfolded expression torn between exasperation and bemusement.
“Well, now I do wonder if you should be my assistant,” she snapped. “But not for your dishonesty, Din. Rather, because you apparently think me a fucking idiot!”
I stared. “I…I beg your par—”
“Ridiculous boy!” she cried. “Absurd child! Do you really not understand that I knew you cheated? That I’ve known all this time?”
“You…What? Truly?”
“Din!” she said, incensed. “Is it not safe to say that you have just witnessed me formulating answers to some very complex problems? Ones far more complicated than the mystifying puzzle of ‘How did this young man who was so shit at his exams suddenly score so well?’ I mean, titan’s taint! The only reason they didn’t investigate further was that I selected you and told them to forget it!”
My mouth fell open. “So…wait. You did not choose me for my scores, ma’am?”
“God, no!” she cried. “Is it not obvious? I chose you because you cheated, Dinios Kol! I didn’t quite know how you did it, no—not until you revealed your lockpicking skills. Then it was quite painfully obvious.”
“You selected me for my dishonesty, ma’am?” I said, offended.
“No!” she said. Then: “Well, yes. Somewhat.”
“What do you mean?” I demanded.
She thought about it. The guns crackled on.
“I chose you,” she said finally, “because I needed an investigator who was resourceful, cunning, and willing to break the rules when necessary. I needed someone dedicated and determined! And you had not only broken into an Iyalet office and spent hours learning the answers to all the tests—you had somehow survived your engraver’s training despite having tremendous issues reading and writing! That speaks to bloody-minded, grim determination if ever I’ve heard it!”
I grew faint. “W-wait. Wait. So you knew…”
“Am I to name every obvious thing I know, boy?”
“But, ma’am…I thought before now, I had been very…”
There was a limp silence, broken only by another crackle of bombards.
“I have good ears,” she said. “I could hear you reading aloud to yourself. And I have seen your writing, of course. I thought it was obvious when you duplicated Sazi text that I was aware of your condition.”
I felt myself blushing hugely. I felt a fool. What a fantasy it had been, to think my blatant weaknesses could go hidden.
“Why would you tolerate me so, ma’am?” I asked. “Why would you wish to…to have someone like me as your assistant?”
She laughed. It was a high, cruel sound. “Would you like to know what alterations I have, Din, that make me so averse to stimulation, and so reluctant to leave my residence?”
I looked at her, startled. To have her so cavalierly propose answering a question I’d debated for months was bewildering. “Well, I…”
“None,” she said.
“What?”
“I have no augmentations that afflict me so. Rather, I have always been this way. This is my natural state.”
There was a long silence.
“Truly?” I said.
“Truly,” she said. “I have never liked the company of too many people, Din. I have always preferred patterns and the consumption of information to socializing. I have preferred and will always prefer staying in my residence and will avoid stimulation at all costs. This is simply who I am.”
“But…but your abilities, the way you…”
“My situation,” she continued, “made me amenable to an…experiment.” She was silent for a bit, as if debating something, before finally saying, “An alteration. The nature of which should not bother you—for you would not be able to comprehend it. But if I hadn’t been the person that I was, then the alterations would not have been a success. It was my choice. I changed and became. I self-assembled. Just as you have done.” She leaned forward. “Sen sez imperiya. The Empire is strong because it recognizes the value in all our people. Including you, Dinios Kol. And when the Empire is weak, it is often because a powerful few have denied us the abundance of our people. That is exactly what has happened in Talagray. And I was assigned here specifically to amend that—and I mean to do so.”
I leaned against the rampart, stunned. None of what she’d said had been a compliment, exactly, yet I struggled with emotion. I had never had anyone understand me for what I was and accept me—nor tell me that the Empire itself desired my services even so.
But then I realized the last thing she’d said.
“Wait,” I said. “Assigned to be here? What? By who—”
Then another rumbling shook the earth, followed by a sharp crackle of bombard fire. A queer, horrid breeze swept over the landscape, and the fretvine towers of all the city creaked in a chorus.
“The time comes,” said Ana. “Look! Look now, Din! Let us see if we shall survive the day!”
I put the spyglass to my eye and looked.
* * *
—
I SAW THE walls again, and the ragged gap of the breach.
I could see the sea beyond, I thought, the tides frothy and faint, the clouds above them soft and roiling; yet then something eclipsed it all, a shadow moving down from the north to block the gap, lumbering to fill the space between the walls.
The air there trembled, like a horrid fume caused the atmosphere to quake. It was difficult to see, but I thought I could make out…
Something. A form.
I stared, and stared, and stared.
It was far wider than it was tall, like a vast, plated, dripping dome, its surface gray and gleaming, and puckered here and there with growths and barnacles from deep-sea creatures that had made their home upon this colossus. The thing moved slowly, its uncountable legs picking their way across the coast in a fretful, nervous dance; yet as it moved I became aware that I was only seeing part of it through the gap, just the tiniest fraction of the vast, shambling beast emerging from the shores.
My skin began to crawl, unable to comprehend what I beheld. It was like looking up on an overcast day and seeing a gap in the clouds; and then watching, dumbfounded, as an eye peered through the hole, staring down at you.
Slowly, the leviathan came to the breach. Through the quaking air I spied some growth emerging from behind the broken walls, hanging from the bottom of the dome; and within this pendulous mass I thought I saw a pair of pale, luminous eyes shining in the fumes, and below them an open maw working stupidly, mindlessly, its dark lips trembling and convulsing as if trying to speak.
I started screaming then, the spyglass stuck to my eye, shrieking words as I tried to describe to Ana what I was witnessing. I was cut short as the horizon lit up with bombard fire, hundreds upon hundreds of artillery firing on the thing at once, and all was concealed with smoke; yet then at the very end of the volley came an immense, earth-shattering crack, a cannonry of a kind I had never heard before and could never imagine; and then a detonation, low and rumbling, one that seemed to go on forever.
The bombard, I thought. The titan-killer. But if it had slain the thing, I could not tell.
Then an enormous crash, like the very moon had fallen from the sky. Dust filled the air, rising in a rumbling wave. I wondered if the beast had pushed over the walls, topped them like a thrush digging through the mulch. I kept waiting, my heart hammering, my skin slick with sweat, the spyglass pressed to my eye so hard my brow began to hurt.
Then the smoke and dust were scraped thin by a breeze; and as it vanished I saw the walls, still standing; and there, before the breach, the form of the leviathan lying on the ground, its massive shell split asunder, and its abominable face lost in the sands.
The horizon lit up with flares, these a pale blue. I stared at them, my mind swimming.
“What color?” said Ana. “What color, Din?”
“Blue, ma’am. The flares are blue.”
“It’s done, then,” whispered Ana. “The beast is dead. And the Empire persists.”
CHAPTER 40
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I SAW ANA VERY little for the next two days, for I and all the other minor officers were tasked with restoring the city to order. The panic and stampede had been almost as damaging as a leviathan’s wrath, which frustrated and flummoxed many; for after all, the Legion had been quite clear that the titan was approaching. “People are often damned fools about what’s before them,” a Legion princeps commented as we tried to figure out how to move a slain horse from the streets. “And not much smarter regarding what’s behind them, at that. It’s amazing we ever get anything done.”
At the end of the second day, an Iudex militis came calling for me, and I followed his summons to an office in the Legion tower.
I entered to find Vashta seated behind a long black desk with Ana and Uhad before her, listening as she spoke. “…seized all of their holdings here in the canton of Talagray,” she was saying. “Fayazi and her entourage are being held for the time being. But greater progress will require greater labors…” Her hard, dark gaze flicked up to me. “Ah. Kol. Please come in.”
I did so, taking a station behind Ana and hoping I did not stink too heavily of horse.
“I suppose we ought to catch you up on what has happened, Signum,” said Vashta. “But being as events are still happening, that may prove difficult. Scribe-hawks have been sent out across Khanum, reporting on both our victory over the leviathan and the sealing of the breach—and your investigation.”
“The holdings of the Haza family have been seized in the third ring,” Uhad explained to me. He was positively beaming. It was the first time I’d ever seen him smile so. “And work has begun on seizing their holdings in the second. I have delayed my retirement in order to assist in these noble labors.”
“But this will take time, and will involve many legal and political battles,” sighed Vashta. “But for now, it is very possible that all the elder sons of the Haza clan may find themselves dispossessed…and in reward for her cooperation, Fayazi Haza might take their place.”
“Fayazi?” I said, surprised. “She’ll be taking over for the Hazas?”
Vashta shrugged grimly. “She has given us all the communications her elders sent her, proving their guilt. And the Haza lands are invaluable. Someone must manage them. It might as well be someone we own. Time shall tell how all this goes. Needless to say, our victory at the breach has now changed to a much more protracted affair. A pity that we never found out who stole the real dappleglass cure. With it as proof, we could bring our enemies down all the faster. We shall look for it, but I am not optimistic.”
“Yet there are rumblings from the emperor’s Sanctum,” said Uhad. “Signs he shall revoke some of the blessings and privileges bestowed to the Hazas—as well as possibly all the gentry.”
I glanced at Ana. I noticed she had not spoken yet, but sat crooked in her chair, head bowed, face inscrutable.
“The institution of patronage shall be tricky to kill,” said Vashta, “but kill it we shall, I think. There may be many more officers like Blas among us. As a sign of the emperor’s devotion, I’m told an Iudexii conzulate will arrive in the canton shortly. It is the first time such a being has blessed the canton in nearly half a century. He has issued no orders yet, but the suggestion is that he intends to discover exactly how entrenched the Hazas were in the Iyalets.”
I could not hide my surprise. Conzulates were akin to gods in the Empire: as Fayazi had said to me, they never aged, but kept growing, until many were almost the size of giants, though their size made them incapable of movement. Some were hundreds of years old. The idea that one might be nearby was stupefying to me.
“You have done great works for the Empire, Kol,” said Vashta. “As such, I declare your apprenticeship over. You may now formally consider yourself Assistant Investigator. You may bear your blade and heralds proudly, and your dispensation will be altered accordingly. Congratulations.”
The enormity of it all was almost too much. I wondered how to react and settled on a bow. “Thank you, ma’am.”
Vashta sighed. “Yes. Though I am unsure when you’ll be able to return to your home, Signum, given that your immunis thinks there is still some third poisoner about. Unless you’ve changed your mind about that, Dolabra?”
“I have not, ma’am,” said Ana.
“And I don’t suppose you’ve had any revelations during all that chaos that could help us rest easier.”
“Well…” Ana grinned. “Not during. But, rather, slightly before, ma’am.”
There was a confused beat.
“What do you mean?” demanded Vashta.
“I have known the true identity of the dappleglass poisoner since Nusis’s murder,” said Ana mildly. “I know who it truly was who plotted and planned all the horrors of the past weeks.”
“You…you aren’t proposing that it was not Jolgalgan?” asked Vashta.
“Oh, Jolgalgan was guilty as sin, but she did not act alone,” said Ana. “That’s been obvious from the start. To begin with, she possessed an awareness of Commander Blas’s movements that far surpassed anything a captain in the Apoths should have had. And then there is the more logistical issue of the blackperch mushrooms. Which I have already shared with you, ma’am.”
“Yes…” said Vashta. “You told me you thought there had been another person at the Hazas’ party—someone who had tossed the mushrooms into the fire, causing a distraction.”
“Correct,” said Ana. “I have felt for some time that there was a third person involved. But as the investigation has continued, I’ve begun to feel that this third person possessed a startling insight into Iyalet information. Then an attempt was made on my own life, in my own rooms, and I realized the third person had to be someone here in the Trifecta. A senior Iyalet officer.”
“Is this true?” said Vashta, horrified. “Do you really think we have such a conspirator?”
