The Tainted Cup, page 39
“I do,” said Ana. “And I think they are sitting directly next to me.” She turned to Uhad. “For it was you, wasn’t it, Tuwey Uhad? It’s been you all along.”
* * *
—
VASHTA AND I turned to stare at Immunis Uhad, who wasn’t beaming anymore. Instead he gazed ahead with a curiously closed, serene expression on his face.
He cleared his throat and said, “I don’t know what you mean, Ana.”
“Don’t be coy,” said Ana. “I’ve known since Nusis’s death. Her safe, as you know, is extremely complicated to open. Yet Din himself realized during that day he took his immunities from her…”
I felt my heart grow cold in my chest. “I told her I shouldn’t watch,” I said softly. “Because an engraver could memorize how to open it.”
“Yes,” said Ana. “Only an engraver could memorize how to manipulate her safe. And you told me yourself, Uhad, that you went to Nusis’s offices frequently for grafts to manage your headaches. You had plenty of chances to watch and learn.” She cocked her head. “And then there is the comment you made to Din at the banquet…that he and I should enjoy a cup of tea. Which would involve using my teapot. Which was, by then, poisoned.”
I felt faintly ill. To realize that Immunis Uhad had tried not only to kill Ana, but me as well, was too gruesome for words.
“Why would I need the cure for dappleglass?” Uhad asked, his voice still calm and serene. “Even if I was this poisoner you’ve dreamed up.”
“Because you aren’t done,” said Ana. “You’re still retiring, yes? To the first ring. And who lives in the first ring? Why, the rest of the Haza clan, of course. You hate them, don’t you? They’ve been flouting the law here in Talagray for nearly a century. Sabotage, corruption, blackmail, none of which you could ever do anything about. But then…you heard something from someone. A whisper about a greater crime. I’m guessing from Jolgalgan, yes?”
Uhad was silent.
“She became one of Kaygi Haza’s chosen ones,” said Ana. “And I’m guessing that during some party with him, she overheard him say…something. Maybe a comment about the cure. Some tossed-off remark that made her start digging in her Iyalet, asking questions, until she slowly put the pieces together. And then, well—she came to you. A crime had been committed, after all, and you’re an Iyalet officer. But…what could you do about it? Nothing. If you tried to bring a case about this, you’d likely get sidelined by the Hazas, or worse. But by then, Uhad, you were old. Beset with afflictions. Your days were short. How better to spend them than by eliminating the villains you’d watch carouse and kill and corrupt in your own canton?
“You plotted how to do it. You planned with Jolgalgan and recruited Ditelus—another Oypati. It was inconvenient that Jolgalgan insisted on a most poetic justice, killing them with the same contagion that killed Oypat, but…you made do. You used your sources and resources to track Blas, and you guided Jolgalgan into killing him. Kaygi Haza was trickier, of course, but you helped there, didn’t you? On the day of the party, you attended very briefly—just long enough to toss a blackperch mushroom into the fire and give Jolgalgan the cover she needed to slip inside and poison his bath.”
Ana grinned madly. “But then came the breach. And the ten dead Engineers. And you realized something had gone terribly wrong with your little plot. But then a stroke of mad luck—for you were appointed head of the investigation into your own crimes! How easy it was to send it looking anywhere except at you. Plots to breach the walls, to assassinate Engineers…anything that didn’t lead to the halls of the Hazas, and your brief moment there.”
Uhad exhaled very slightly. “But…but then you came,” he whispered.
“Yes,” said Ana. “You tried to slow me down. At first, I thought you were corrupt, you know. I even had Din test you, with the money. But you weren’t corrupt at all. No, you were quite the other thing—righteous zealot, willing to both tolerate and inflict pain to achieve your ends. But still, I made you worried. You felt me getting close. So you went to Jolgalgan’s little hut out in the Plains of the Path. You sabotaged her equipment. Then asked her to create more poison for you. And when she did so, she breathed in a lungful of contagion. You asked Ditelus to check in on her—and he was exposed to the same.”
A fluttering in my eyes. I remembered Ditelus screaming just before he died: You…you Iudex. You say you want justice. You always say that! You always say that!
“You hoped the investigation was done then,” said Ana. “But you were committed now, and your mission wasn’t done. You still had dappleglass taken from Jolgalgan, and the elder Hazas had still escaped justice. All you had to do was get to the first ring and continue your murderous work—but then you heard of the reagents key in Nusis’s safe. You realized what it really was. And you’re no Apoth, like Jolgalgan was. You’re no expert in dappleglass. An accidental infection was very possible. A cure for it would be most useful for your final days. You just had to make sure that I didn’t catch you before you got away. Hence, the teapot.”
Uhad closed his eyes. There was a long, unpleasant silence.
“Would you like to say something for yourself,” said Ana, “or would you prefer to have Din go to your rooms, and find our missing cure, along with all your horrid poisons?”
“He didn’t even try to hide it,” Uhad whispered. “Can you believe that?”
“Who?” said Ana.
“Kaygi Haza. When…when Jolgalgan mentioned she was from Oypat, the old man, drunk, just said flat-out: ‘Ah, Oypat. Well, Blas fucked that up, didn’t he? Fucked it up for everyone, with the cure.’ Then he forgot he ever said it. Because…it didn’t matter to him, what he’d done. But it mattered to Jolgalgan. And it mattered to me.”
There was a tense silence.
“Do you have any idea what it’s like,” Uhad said softly, “to have so many memories in my mind? So many eternal, endless, everlasting memories of…of corruption, of bribery, of exploitation? All while we imperial officers slaved and worked and died to keep horrors from our shores?”
Miljin’s voice echoed in my ears as I gazed at Uhad: Can’t take too many wet seasons, the engravers. They don’t age well.
“I thought the walls kept the titans out,” said Uhad wearily. “But the more I worked, the more I felt like they caged us in, with the gentry. And no one was going to fix it. It was all broken. Nobody cared. Nobody cared, so long as things kept going on as they were.”
“So you tried yourself,” said Ana. She trembled with rage. “You tried to fix it yourself—and you killed hundreds of people doing it!”
“I had to do something!” Uhad snarled. “I couldn’t stand to just sit by and watch! The Empire was doing nothing, nothing! As was the Iudex! And you could do nothing, either, Ana! Hell, you’d tried to stop the Hazas, and you’d gotten banished to Daretana for it!”
At that, Ana stood up and bellowed, “Are you so sure, Tuwey Uhad?”
Uhad stared at her, bewildered. “Wh-what do you mean?”
“Don’t you think it oddly perfect, Uhad,” thundered Ana, “that I of all people was put on the doorstep of the Talagray canton? Don’t you think it very convenient that of all the investigators in all the Iudex, it was me who was placed directly next door to the canton with the most blatant gentry corruption of all?”
“You…you mean…You were sent to Daretana…to watch the Hazas?” he said, stunned.
“And I barely had to wait four months before they landed in my lap,” she hissed. “But it was because of you. Because the Iyalets failed in their duty. Because you failed in your duty!”
“No, that’s…that’s impossible!” said Uhad. “They killed your assistant investigator! I know that! Even the Hazas know that!”
“Have you ever seen the body?” snapped Ana. She was shivering with rage now. “Have you ever considered that it was very convenient to let the Hazas believe that I had been neutralized, so that they could then do something very obvious and stupid? Something that would give the Iudex an excuse to bring them to heel? But then you had to make your play at justice. And countless people are dead because of it! What a fool you are, Uhad. What an utter, utter fool.” She turned to me. “Din, get out your engraver’s bonds. I am ordering you to arrest this man. You wanted justice, Tuwey Uhad, and it shall be given to you—by a rope and a scaffold, surely.”
CHAPTER 41
| | |
AS EVENING FELL WE gathered in the Trifecta, between the Legion and Engineering and the now-closed Iudex tower. They had built a bonfire there, a four-beamed structure with an ornate woven roof. In the center lay stacks of blackwood, soaked in oil, and atop the stacks rested four wooden figures, anointed in black, purple, red, and blue—a symbolic pyre, for each of the Iyalets that had lost officers.
As the sun set the holy men of the imperial cults lit their thuribles and bathed the pyre in holy smokes and sang of the Khanum, of the march to the sea, of the building of the walls, and of the Empire that awaited us on the other side of this life. When they finished a Legionnaire stepped forward, limping on a crutch, and lit a torch and placed it at the bottom of the pyre, and as the fires blossomed I stood among the weeping crowd and said my thanks to the officers who had fallen during these dark days—both those who had perished in the savagery at the walls, and those felled by the twitch, in this city we deemed civilized.
The crowd departed, yet I remained, my thoughts black and cloudy from all the suffering I’d witnessed, memories I’d never scrub from my soul. Then I saw I did not stand alone: the hulking figure of Captain Miljin stood at the edge of the pyre, staring into the flickering flames.
I approached until I stood beside him. The heat here was so great I felt the hairs upon my face curling. There was a distant, solemn look on the captain’s face, and for a long while he did not notice me. Then he did a double take and stared, as if surprised to find me here, a glint of madness in his eyes.
“Oh,” he said. “Kol.”
“Evening, sir,” I said. I bowed.
He did not answer but resumed staring at the fire. A long silence passed.
“How are you doing, sir?” I asked. An absurd question to ask, but it was all I could think to say.
“Tell me…” he said.
“Yes, sir?”
“Were you there, in the room, when she unmasked Uhad?”
I hesitated, then nodded. I did not tell him that it was I who’d laid bonds on the immunis and escorted him to the cells.
Miljin stared into the fire for a moment longer. “And…did you ever suspect?” he asked. His voice was terribly hoarse. “Did you ever know it was he who wove such evil about all our ears, all this time?”
“I didn’t, sir. I had no idea. I don’t think Ana truly knew until after Nusis was killed.”
“Killed on my watch,” he said. “In my city.”
Another long moment passed. Ashes danced around us like pollen on a spring breeze.
“None of us knew,” I said. “You couldn’t have known, si—”
“Don’t,” he said sharply. “Don’t bother.”
I looked away, still bathed in the heat of the pyre, and held my tongue.
“But…I was right about one thing,” he said. “The Empire has less need of brawn these days, and noble battlers, and more need of plotters and schemers. Like your Ana. And you, perhaps.”
I did not know what to say to such a thing. I held my tongue.
“You’re leaving soon—yes, Kol?” he said.
“Yes, sir. In a few days, I think.”
He nodded. “Then will you do an old man a favor?”
“If I can, sir.”
With a grunt, Miljin unbuckled his scabbard and gazed at it for a moment. Then he held it out to me. “Will you take this with you when you go?” he asked.
I stared at the scabbard, the mechanical hilt glinting in the dying light of the pyres.
“I’m not staying in the Iudex, Kol,” said Miljin. “Not my place anymore. I’ll return to the Legion, to what I know best. Walls and titans and bombards and the sea.”
“Sir, I—”
“But it’s as I told you—swords have little use against a leviathan. They’re better applied against them’s who make it difficult to fight leviathans. And this one will do more for the Empire to go with you, to wherever your path takes you, Kol.”
I took the scabbard from him, bewildered. Again, I marveled at its lightness, its leather warm from the heat of the flames. “You mean back to Daretana, sir?” I asked.
Miljin finally smiled. “Ha! You think you’re going back to Daretana, boy? How quaint.”
I wondered what he meant by that, but then I heard a voice: “You’re all right!”
I looked over my shoulder and saw the Legionnaire on the crutch approaching, his head haloed by the setting sun behind. It took me a moment to spy the shabby, earnest smile of Captain Kepheus Strovi within that shadowy face.
“You remember how to open it, Kol?” said Miljin beside me.
Distracted, I returned to him. I nodded. “I do, sir. But—”
“Good.” He nodded to me. “Good luck in your travels, Signum. I wish you much honor, and great success.”
Then he turned and marched away, stumping out of the Trifecta toward the east.
* * *
—
KEPHEUS AND I walked the lanes of Talagray, moving slowly as he was on a crutch—a memento he’d won when the titan-killer had been fired. “Blasted me clear off my platform,” he said sheepishly. “Twisted my ankle. Medikkers should have me right in a day, but they’ve larger issues to deal with.”
“I saw it from a distance,” I said. “The thing, coming to the breach. I saw it…It had a face? And seemed to be trying to speak?”
“We killed it,” he said gruffly. “And held it back. That’s all’s that needs to be said of it.”
We did not talk any more of what we’d witnessed, he at the walls and I in the city. The things we’d seen and done now felt too big for words. Silence was a better language. Yet I did tell him of all that Captain Miljin had just said to me.
“Yes…” said Kepheus sadly. “It must be a hard thing, to go from the Legion to the Iudex.”
“Why so?”
“Well, in the Legion, you know each wet season if you have won or lost. Yet in the Iudex, you can do all your duties aright, and catch every crooked soul—but at the end, there is no putting right what wrong was done.”
I said nothing to that. I thought of Uhad, and how all his memories of so many injustices had changed him. I wondered, for the first time, if my own would do the same to me.
“You’re leaving,” he said finally. “Yes?”
“I…I think so,” I admitted. “Our investigation is done. And you?”
“I shall stay here. My family has asked me to return home, but…There’s more to do. And I mean to do it, until there is no more.”
“ ‘The fulcrum on which the rest of the Empire pivots,’ ” I quoted.
“Ha! You remembered.”
I gave him a look.
“Oh, right,” he said. “I suppose that’s not terribly surprising…But. Here. I’ve a gift for you, Dinios.”
“Oh. Well. You didn’t…”
He handed me a paper package. I did not need to untie it to know what it was: the scent of tobacco flowed from the paper the second I squeezed it.
“Pipes!” I said, laughing. “Shootstraw pipes. You’ll bankrupt yourself, giving me these.”
“I won’t.” He smiled at me. “I just hope they taste as good as the one we shared.”
I smiled back. “I don’t know how they could. That one had its own taste.”
We fell silent, facing the east. Perhaps it was the sudden weight of so many memories I now had within me, but I felt tears in my eyes, and tried to wipe them from my face.
“I’m only here for a few days longer,” I said. “It feels so little time.”
He leaned forward and kissed me. He smelled of leather, and oil, and the frail curls of fretvine leaves.
“This is Talagray,” he said. “Nothing is certain.”
I took him by the hand, and together we returned to the city to find what sweetness we could in the few days we had.
CHAPTER 42
| | |
I STARED BACKWARD AT the towers of Talagray as our carriage rumbled along, the Plains of the Path and the massive sea walls slowly retreating into the morning mist. I counted the remaining months of the wet season and grappled with the knowledge that in a mere handful of months more another season would come.
“Will it hold?” asked Ana’s voice softly.
I turned back around to her, sitting blindfolded in the seat across from me, with her hands folded pleasantly in her lap.
“Pardon, ma’am?” I said.
“Will it hold—that’s what you’re thinking, yes?” she said.
“Do you read thoughts now, ma’am?”
“Oh, no. It is the obvious thought one might have upon leaving Talagray—or coming to it. Will all those artifices and structures, built from the blood and toil of so many and planned by so many brilliant minds…will they hold in the face of what’s coming?” She cocked her head, grinning. “I wish I could read your thoughts, Din. Instead I’m forced to ask you stupid questions.”
“You’ve the rest of the trip to torment me, ma’am,” I said wryly. “No need to start early.”
“Mm. But I’m curious about one particular question I have for you.”
“And what’s that?”
“I’d like to ask you—what is the Empire, Din?”
I blinked as the carriage bounced along. “Ah…pardon, ma’am?”
“I’ve heard your reports, after all,” she said. “I’ve noticed many people made claims to you that the Empire was this, or that, or functioned in this way…It’s strange, isn’t it? Perhaps the existential nature of the canton provokes it. But I am curious what your conclusions are. What is the Empire, Din? Can you describe it?”
