The Tainted Cup, page 5
This meant the Empire always had better soldiers than most other fighting forces, certainly. But the beating heart of the Empire were the Sublimes: the cerebrally suffused and augmented set who planned, managed, and coordinated everything the many Iyalets of the Empire did.
Each type of Sublime was different. There were axioms, the people whose minds had been altered to process calculations inhumanly well; linguas, suffused to be inhumanly skilled at speaking and reading and writing in countless languages; spatiasts, altered to possess an inhumanly accurate comprehension of space, making them stunningly good drawers and map makers; and then a few other odd sorts you only saw very rarely.
These suffusions weren’t pleasant—many shortened the lives of those who took them, by years if not decades, and they almost always rendered people sterile—but Sublimes were irreplaceable. It took every bit of cunning and planning to survive what came from the seas to the east each wet season.
Most sought-after were the engravers, like myself, who had been suffused to remember all they saw, acting as living libraries of information. This was the enhancement I used as I described my investigation to Ana: remembering everything, describing all I’d seen, regurgitating every piece of spoken speech in the exact same tone I’d heard it said to me. Everything I’d captured during my time in that mansion I now gave to Ana, over the course of nearly four hours.
When I was finished talking it was just past sunset. A single mai-lantern in the corner began to glimmer as the little worms within awoke, began to eat their food pellets at the bottom, and started to glow. There was no sound but the solitary, mournful song of some distant jungle bird.
Ana took a sudden breath, sucking in air like she was waking from a deep sleep, and exhaled. “Right,” she said. “Very good. I have a few questions, Din…”
She asked me many strange things then. How many steps did it take me to cross the entirety of the house? Was Gennadios left- or right-handed? Did Uxos have any prominent scars on his hands? Had I spied any recently disturbed soil at the edges of the estate walls, the moist underside of the mulch churned up by a passing boot, perhaps?
With each question I caught the scent of lye, felt the fluttering in the backs of my eyes, and then the answers fell from my lips with all the grace of a nauseous belch: eighty-nine steps; Gennadios had placed her right hand atop her left in her lap, indicating she was right-handed; Uxos had two thin white scars on the back of his right thumb knuckle, and though his finger knuckles had been bloodied, that had been due to the cracking of calluses there; and no, I’d seen no churned-up mulch except for a bit that had been disturbed by a thrush.
Finally Ana went silent. Then she said, “Thank you for all that, Din.” Her fingers flittered in the folds of her dress. “The Haza family…You’re not familiar with them.”
“I know they’re rich, ma’am. Know they own a lot of stuff in the inner rings of the Empire. Yet that is the run of it.”
“Mm. They are gentryfolk. Which means they own the most valuable thing in all of the Empire.” Her hand flashed forward, and she pinched a clod of dried mud off my boot and crumbled it into dust. “Land. Takes a lot of dirt to grow all the plants and animals and reagents to make the Empire’s many alterations. Just incomprehensibly huge agricultural works, sprawled across the second and third rings of the Empire. This means the ears of the Empire are more attuned to the voice of gentry, and such folk don’t necessarily feel like they need to obey all of our laws all of the time—which can make it hard when they’re tangled up in suspicious shit like this.”
“Did I not meet your expectations in this regard, ma’am?” I asked, worried.
“Oh, no, no. You did fine, Din. I mean, if I’d been in your boots, I’d have found that fucker of a housekeeper’s wine cup and dumped in a thimble of ground glass. But really, for your first murder investigation, you did phenomenal—walking up to a Haza estate and interrogating each witness is not something many people would have managed so well.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” I said, pleased.
“In fact, Din, I’d say you have the exact right appetite for bland, bloody-minded drudgery that makes an assistant investigator excel.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” I said, far less pleased.
“And it’s no fault of yours that you’re unable to determine the truth of what happened. The Apothetikals of this canton are apparently so stupid they must think a pair of trousers to be a fascinating puzzle.” She slid her blindfold off. Her eyes were dancing in their sockets so fast that their pupils almost became a blur. “A sweet, sickly bloom…white, purple, and yellow, and growing from the flesh of a man…Tell me, Din. Do you know the canton of Oypat?”
I summoned the map of the Empire in my mind: a tremendous, spoked wheel within a spoked wheel, with the Empire’s curving walls acting as the felloes, and the roads acting as the spokes. But though I’d engraved all the cantons of the Empire within my memory, I didn’t know Oypat.
“I…do not, ma’am,” I said.
“Not surprising,” she said. “The canton fell victim to a contagion about eleven years ago. Some clever Apoth there sought to make cheap parchment, and suffused a type of grass to grow very, very quickly…It was called dappleglass—a simple weed similar to shootstraw. It grew from tiny, sporelike seeds, and it had a white flower with a yellow and purple interior, and a rather unpleasant aroma. Yet then the dappleglass grew far too quickly. It invaded every patch of soil within the canton of Oypat, killing off most of the wildlife, and when it ran out of soil, the grass figured out how to grow within the wood of the homes and structures there, and even on the sides of trees. But the most alarming thing was what happened to the people who happened to bathe in the rivers downstream of this grass.”
“Did…did it grow inside the people, ma’am?” I asked.
“Correct, Din. Very good! Most of the growths could be surgically removed, but others…Well. They weren’t so lucky. The spores of the plant even tried to grow on fernpaper walls and doors, which, as you accurately noted, are pretty resistant to such things. Mostly they blackened and moldered to prevent the spores from taking root. Just having dappleglass near a fernpaper panel made it grow black dots within hours. But…” She stood and began pacing up and down her little house. “I have never heard of dappleglass growing so murderously quickly before. Nor being able to destroy ceilings and walls. That is different…and much deadlier.”
“Have you seen this plant before, ma’am?” I asked.
“Seen it? Absolutely not.” She gestured at the books about her. “I read about it, obviously. But I’m sure this is it.”
“So…what is your conclusion, ma’am?” I asked. “How was Commander Blas exposed to this dappleglass?”
“Oh, intentionally,” she said. “That is how.”
A taut silence.
“You mean…”
“I mean, I am about eighty percent sure that Commander Taqtasa Blas was assassinated. Probably not by someone within the house, but with the help of someone within the house.”
“Truly?” I said. “You think that just from what I told you, ma’am?”
“Certainly,” she said. “What you told me is more than enough. In fact, it’s so obvious that I’m worried this all might turn out a little boring…Can you not see it? The blackened fernpaper, the rotted kirpis shroom, and the insufferable heat?”
“Afraid I can’t see a thing, ma’am.”
“It’s there,” she said. She waved a hand, dismissive. “You just have to look at it right. Here are our next steps, Din.” She took out a slip of paper and started scribbling on it. “I want you to take this to the Haza house in the morning. This is a formal writ of summons. Use it to bring the oldest servant girl, the housekeeper, and the groundskeeper here, to my quarters, for me to speak to personally. Tell them it’s a routine request. And be ready to listen. You’re my engraver. You remember what that means, Din? You are the living legal embodiment of our investigation. All that’s between your ears is considered actionable evidence within the Iudex of the Empire. So—listen. And bring your engraver’s bonds.”
That gave me pause. An Iudex engraver’s bonds were a set of cleverly engineered manacles which came with twenty tiny combination locks that could be quickly set to any sequence. The sequences were so complex that only someone with an enhanced memory could recall them; so, when the manacles were clapped on someone’s wrists, only the engraver who’d put them on could easily take them off. Yet I had never had the chance to use mine yet.
“I do wish to ask, ma’am,” I said.
“Yes, Din?”
“Well…previously all our cases were about pay fraud.”
“So?”
“So…should I expect anything different here?”
A flippant shrug. “Generally I find the main difference with murder cases is how loud they are. All the screaming, you see. But you should be prepared. There is a very high chance one of those three people you’re going to bring here participated in a murder. People under that sort of stress do all kinds of dumb shit. So you’ll want to be armed—bring your sword.”
“I’m afraid I don’t have a sword, ma’am,” I said.
“You don’t?” she said. “Why not?”
“I’m still in my apprenticeship to you.”
A stupefied pause. “You are?”
“Yes? I’ve only been working for you for four months, ma’am. I don’t get imperial-issued arms until my apprenticeship is up.”
“Well…hell, I don’t know, bring a big fucking stick or something! Do I have to think of everything?”
“I can bring a practice sword, ma’am,” I said. “There’s no policy against that, and I’m quite familiar with the—”
“Yes, yes, yes,” she said, flapping her hand at me. “First in your class at dueling, you wouldn’t shut up about that when I interviewed you. Do that, then. And search them before they come in. Understood?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Good.” She returned to plucking at her wire contraption. “Good evening, then, Din.”
I stood at her doorway, still standing at attention.
“I said good evening, Din. But you appear to still be here.”
“It’s the thirtieth of Skalasi, ma’am,” I said. “End of the month.”
“Oh.” With a sigh, she stood. “Right. Your dispensation. Where’s the form…” She ripped open a drawer, pulled out a piece of parchment, and hurriedly scribbled on it. “There. Another month’s good work noted. Dance off to the banks, then, and collect your pay.”
I bowed as I took it. “Thank you, ma’am.”
She returned to her contraption. “When the hell do I get to stop bothering with those damned forms, Din?”
“When I am no longer your apprentice and become your official assistant.”
“Oh, yes.” She laughed dully. “When you graduate. As if climbing the Daretana bureaucracy was somehow special.”
I stood up straight, glaring ahead. She seemed to taste the change in my demeanor: she glanced at me, then sighed.
“Ohh, what is it?” she said. “What have I said now?”
“It is special,” I said, “to me, ma’am.” I looked at her. “And to most of us here in this canton, who have joined the Iyalets to better our position.”
She paused. For once there was no hint of a grin playing at her lips.
“Ahh,” she said. “Well. Shit. In that case, Din, I…” Her jaw flexed, like she had to silently practice the word before saying it; and when she did, she said it grudgingly, like pulling a sour tooth. “I apologize.”
“Understood, ma’am,” I said. “For what it’s worth, I do appreciate your being willing t—”
“Shut up!” she snapped.
“What?”
She started waving her hands about. “Just shut up, Din!”
“I mean…I…what?”
“I mean shh! Be quiet!”
She held up a finger, eyes wide, head cocked.
Then I heard it: a soft, eerie chiming sound.
“Are you hearing that, Din,” she whispered, “or am I really going mad now?”
“I hear it, ma’am.” I looked around for the source of the chiming, bewildered, but Ana whirled to look at her contraption.
“It works? It works!” She cackled with glee. “I’ve read about such instruments, but I wasn’t quite sure if I’d be able to pull it off in such a crude environment…”
I looked over her shoulder at the contraption. It was a boxlike frame of wires, with a round, heavy weight hanging down from the exact center. The weight had a little metal tip at the end, which rested against a situr string stretched across the bottom of the frame. I realized the weight was moving very slightly, vibrating from some unseen force, so its tip was tapping against the string with a soft chiming.
“What’s that, ma’am?” I asked.
“An Engineering quake instrument,” she said. “When the earth below moves at all, just shakes the tiniest bit, the weight tries to stay in place, and bounces against the string. It takes a lot to calibrate it right, but if you do it, it can be very sensitive. For example—you can’t feel the earth shaking now, can you, Din?”
“The earth is shaking?” I said. “Right now? Truly?”
“You’re probably accustomed to it, having been here for so long. But yes. The earth is shaking. Right now.”
I watched as the little weight bounced against the string, and felt my skin go cold.
“It’s shaking…” I said. “It’s shaking because…”
“Yes,” she said quietly. “What we are witnessing, Din, are the quakes from the sea floor about two hundred leagues away, as a leviathan slowly churns its way through the bottom of the ocean, toward the coast.”
I stared at the bouncing weight. The atonal chiming suddenly seemed far louder.
“Must be a big one,” said Ana, grinning. “Let’s hope the sea walls hold, eh?”
CHAPTER 4
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IT WAS LATE BY the time I got to the post station at the edge of town. The Fisher’s Hook twinkled high above the gray treetops, bent slightly to the east, signaling the fading of the month of Skalasi and the beginning of the month of Kyuz. Though the post station was deserted except for a few exhausted-looking mules tied up at the back, Postmaster Stephinos was still leaning against his counter, arms crossed, a thread of smoke unscrolling from his tiny pipe. The coal in its bowl danced in the dark as he nodded his head at me.
“Evening, Kol,” he said. “Thought I’d be expecting you.”
“Evening, Stephinos,” I said. “I’ve a letter to mail.”
“I’m sure you do. That time of the month. Hence why I waited for you.”
“Oh. You did?”
He gestured to himself, a flamboyant little flourish—Obviously, as I am here.
“Oh, well. Thank you for that, Steph.”
He watched me fumble in my pockets, his black Legionnaire’s cloak half-lost in the dark, his gaze keen but not impatient. The position of Postmaster was close to that of a god in a place like Daretana, touching nearly everything that mattered to everyone every day. How lucky we were to have one as benevolent as Stephinos.
I handed over the parchment Ana had given me. Stephinos filed it away and slid another piece of paper over to me: my dispensation, a document I could bring to any imperial bank to collect my monthly pay.
“I’m going to be really indulgent this time,” I said, picking it up.
“Are you now,” he said.
“Yes. I’m going to hold it for ten seconds rather than the usual five before giving it right back to you, and won’t that be a treat.”
He grinned. I studied my monthly dispensation, trying to take satisfaction in it. Like every piece of text I saw, the letters quivered and slipped about, but the numbers made sense—though the amount they indicated was very small.
“What a thing it is,” I said, “to be rich for a handful of minutes.” I sighed, put it back down on the counter, and pushed it over to him. “Or at least slightly less poor.”
Stephinos watched me, a sympathetic gleam in his eye. “Need an envelope?” he said around his pipe.
“No,” I said. “I’ve got one.” I slid the envelope out of my pocket and handed it over. I’d spent a few minutes yesterday working on the address, sketching parallel lines on its front to make sure the letters touched the lines on the top and bottom. It was difficult for me to write legible text, but if I was patient and careful, I could manage it.
Stephinos appraised my work like I’d made a copy of a holy text. “This one’s pretty good!” he said. “Much better than the others.”
“Don’t need to drown me in compliments, Steph. But I appreciate it.”
“You seem in need of them. Is she running you ragged again?”
“If I’m alive, then the answer’s yes.” I tried to smile, but the chiming of Ana’s little contraption echoed in my ears. I glanced eastward, thinking. “Steph—you’re Legion, and you know more than anyone about the shape of things around here. Can I ask you something?”
“Knowing the shape of things isn’t the same thing as knowing things. But you can try.”
“Has there been any word on how the wet season’s going to be this year?” I asked. “Any chance we’re going to catch a good one?”
A baleful stare. “Ahh. Huh. No such thing as a good wet season, Kol,” he said. “But as to whether this one’s worse than others…” He waved his hand at the warehouses and lots beyond. “Read the mud, boy. Read how it’s churned. Read the number of horses, the amount of stone, the crates of bombards headed east. Read those and tell me what you think.”
