IT WAS LATE AFTERNOON when I raced across the Iudex tower atrium, Jolgalgan’s parchments rustling in my pocket. I felt I looked quite a sight, but then I saw Captain Miljin doing the same, sprinting across the atrium, though he was going out rather than in.

He skidded to a stop as he passed me. “Kol!” he breathed. “Where the devil…”

I took in his flush face, his wild eyes. Instantly I knew he had found Aristan.

I fought to keep my voice steady, and asked, “What’s going on, sir?”

“We’ve just found the maddest mess of shit, simply the maddest thing, but…” Miljin looked back out the door. “But I have business to tend to. Go and ask your immunis. She can fill you in!” Then he dashed away, moving surprisingly fast for a man of his age.

I watched him go. I wondered if Ana’s little experiment had yielded results.

I raced up the stairs for the second time that day, my head spilling over with thoughts. Yet when I came to Ana’s door, I paused.

Voices from inside: hers, then a man’s. Soft, not agitated—or at least not yet.

I knocked. The customary singing “Come!”

I opened the door. Young Captain Kepheus Strovi sat in a chair in the middle of the room, dressed in Legion blacks with his legs crossed—a casual pose, like he was perfectly at home here. He looked over his shoulder and his eyes widened slightly when he saw me.

I stopped short at the sight of him. It took me a moment to recall he was meant to be helping Ana find information on all the fernpaper millers in Talagray.

I looked about for Ana but couldn’t find her. Then the overpowering scent of fish struck my nostrils, and I heard her voice: “Din! What good timing. Strovi here has just brought me all those fernpaper orders I’d requested.”

I looked down. Ana was lying on the floor on her back at Strovi’s feet, half-concealed in a pile of parchments, blindfolded as usual. To her left was a tray containing the remains of a fish, salted and piled with herbs, the flesh so pink it must have never known flame.

“Why are you…” I said.

“On the floor?” she said. “I can feel the movements of this tower better from here, Din, reading the wind and the weather with my back.” She grinned. “It’s marvelous. You ought to try it sometime.”

Strovi was watching me with a half smile on his face, amused by the madness of it all. He was not nearly as disheveled as he’d looked that night when he and Vashta had come to Daretana: now he was clean-shaven, his mop of curly dark hair was elegantly clipped back, and his black cloak was pressed and his boots polished. Between his size and his vitality he seemed to take up the whole of the room, even sprawled in a chair with Ana on the floor beside him.

There was a ceramic cup in his lap and a pot of tea on the table beside him. I took off my straw cone hat, bowed to him, and entered. Then I glanced into the teapot—half empty—and laid a finger against its side. It was cool to the touch.

“He’s just brought you your orders, ma’am?” I asked. “From the shape of things, he’s been here awhile. You’ve been interrogating him, haven’t you.”

“It, ah…” Strovi cleared his throat. “It has been an hour or so, ma’am. Possibly two. Or, ah, three.”

Ana waved a hand, indifferent. “Possibly. It’s not very often that I get to parley with a Talagray Legion officer.”

“So long as he’s here with consent,” I said. “And you’re being civil, ma’am.”

“I’m as civil as a magistrate,” she said. “Why, I haven’t asked the young captain here about the aroma of his piss once.”

Strovi’s bemused smile flickered out like a candle flame.

“I just passed Captain Miljin on the way in, ma’am,” I said pointedly. “He mentioned some discovery that had been made…”

She waved a hand. “And I have little update to give you on it. We shall discuss it later.”

I narrowed my eyes. Little update? Did she now think our colleagues above suspicion?

“Strovi here was telling me, Din,” said Ana languidly, “that the Legion is digging through the old history books for how to get us out of this damned spot. Nearly sixty years ago the Empire suffered a terrible breach, and the only way they plugged it up was by waiting for a second leviathan to approach and slaughtering it directly at the breach point, turning its carcass into an impassible obstacle, and plugging the hole! Isn’t that marvelous?”

“As marvelous as a massive carcass could be, I suppose, ma’am,” I said.

“They’ll do it a little differently this time about,” she said. Her fingers dug in the flesh of the fish, plucked out a thread of pink tissue, and dropped it in her open mouth. “Rather than using thousands of damn soldiers firing hundreds of ballistas, they’re putting together some kind of bombard that can—theoretically—drop a leviathan in one shot. A titan-killer.”

“I believe Nusis mentioned something about that to me,” I said. I looked to Strovi. “Apparently the bombard requires extensive grafts?”

“For the explosive powder,” explained Strovi. “It’s a new variant. It has to be much more powerful to punch through one of the beasts. But as much as I enjoy answering all your, ah, extensive questions about bombards, ma’am, that’s not what Commander-Prificto Vashta has assigned me to do here. Rather, I’m to help with your investigation in any way I can.”

“Fascinating.” Still lying flat on the floor, Ana snatched up a morsel of fish flesh and held it out to me. “Would you care for a bite of tartun, Din? Strovi said no, but it was just caught today.”

I eyed the stringy clump of pink meat hanging from her fingers. “Afraid I have to refrain, ma’am.”

“Suit yourself,” said Ana. She popped it in her mouth. “What else did Nusis have to say, Din? Something useful about this Jolgalgan?”

“I would say very useful, ma’am,” I said quietly. I placed Jolgalgan’s papers in Ana’s lap. Ana sat up and began pawing through them, apparently indifferent to the streaks of fish fat she left on the parchments.

“Start talking, child,” Ana said sharply. “Now.”

I recounted my conversation with Nusis exactly. Captain Strovi’s eyes grew wider the more I spoke, and Ana pawed ever faster at the parchments in her lap.

There was a beat of silence as I finished.

Then the captain exclaimed, “You have it, then! You’ve found her, yes? This Jolgalgan surely is our culprit! What amazing work!”

I nodded to him stiffly. I’d never gotten such a compliment from a senior officer of another Iyalet before, especially not the Legion, and did not quite know how to handle it.

“You know,” said Ana thoughtfully, “I am inclined to agree…”

“I still have trouble comprehending the why, ma’am,” I said. “Why kill so many Engineers in such a fashion?”

“Well, it was the Engineers and the Apoths who were supposed to stop the dappleglass outbreak in Oypat, yes?” said Ana. “And, no offense to our absent colleagues, but they didn’t do a very good job, being as the whole fucking canton’s dead now. Just as Nusis said, many Oypati hold a bitter grudge. It takes little effort to imagine what horrors a mad Apoth Oypati with a grudge might be capable of. I’m not quite sure what killing a bunch of junior officers might accomplish, but…she continues to be an excellent suspect, really.” She cocked her head. “The only question is…why now?”

“What might you mean, ma’am?” said Strovi.

“She’s been serving as an Apoth for years. I wonder…What set her off? And where is she now?”

“The Legion moves swiftly,” said Strovi. “We watch all gates and roads. We shall find her soon enough, of that I am sure.”

“Perhaps,” said Ana. “But if she really is our killer, she’s clever, and skilled at evasion. She used dernpaste to hide her features, and knew how to move across country quickly. And we’ve no idea where she is now. But we now seem to really be getting somewhere, boys! We possibly have a who. Kind of think we have a how—for, presumably, Jolgalgan came to one of these secret meetings of Engineers and poisoned them all there. And thanks to your and Miljin’s work yesterday, Din, we also have a when—the Engineers were poisoned eight days before the breach, the date of their last meeting, the sixth of Kyuz. Now we just need the where. And Strovi here has already given us the materials we need to solve the rest!” She turned her blindfolded face to him. “These orders are from every fernpaper miller in the city, correct, Captain?”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Strovi. “All we could find.”

“And we’re looking for big orders. All conducted on or about eight days before the breach—the day of the poisoning.” She pursed her mouth, chewing on an especially tough piece of gristle, then said, “There are, I think, four options.”

Strovi looked startled. “Y-you’ve already read them all, ma’am?”

“Our conversation was interesting, Captain,” she said. “But not so interesting as to occupy the whole of my attention…” Still blindfolded, she snatched up four different papers, walked over on her knees, fumbled to find Strovi’s legs, and then stuffed the papers into his lap. Then she leaned forward to search the top one with her fingers until she pointed to a line. “This mill here—Ostrok’s? See it? Order for four panels, nine days before the breach.”

Strovi looked positively alarmed to have Ana invade his space so thoroughly, her head hovering over his knees as she pressed her index finger into the papers atop his crotch. “Ahh. Y-yes, ma’am,” he said. “I see it.”

“And then this one here.” She jabbed at the paper, hard. Strovi twitched. “Rakmon. Six fernpaper panels, ordered five days before the breach.”

“Y-yes, an—”

“And then this one.” Another jab, this one very hard. Strovi yelped slightly.

“Ana!” I said.

“Mm?” she said. “What is it, Din?”

“I rather think he believes you. Yes, Captain?”

Strovi nodded vigorously. “Y-yes. Very much so. Totally do, ma’am.”

“Oh,” she said mildly. She slid out from his lap and waved the papers about, yawning. “Anyways. These are the first three options that fit the timeline that Din has so helpfully provided. But I don’t think any of them are the best candidates.”

“But…are you suggesting, ma’am,” said Strovi, still shaken, “that you can remember all of the fernpaper orders I just gave to you? And you can just summon up any one of them in your memory as you please?”

Ana grinned. “I remember and analyze all things interesting, Captain. And this has kept me interested. Thus far, at least.”

I smirked, for I was familiar with this line. But I wondered—was Ana actually an engraver? Was that her augmentation? Was she now mentally summoning all the words she’d read with her fingers as she’d lain on that floor? Yet that didn’t seem right. Though engravers like myself could instantly recall huge amounts of information, we couldn’t make the wild jumps of intuition that Ana seemed so prone to.

“I will say I am more interested in what’s not on these lists,” Ana continued, “than what is. There are a few shops, Strovi, that did not respond to your inquiries. Despite you sending some goddamn Legionnaires to their doorstep. Including this shop,” she said. A finger stabbed out, nearly piercing one parchment on the floor. “The fernpaper miller Yonas Suberek. This man did not answer your summons and was marked absent.”

Strovi looked bewildered. “Ah…I was not there for that inquiry, ma’am, so I will have to take your word for that. But all we can do is inquire. We can’t compel people to be present and answe—”

“And yet!” she said. She ripped another parchment out from the pile and slapped it with the back of her hand. “His neighbor was another miller. Fellow by the name of Linz Kestip. Now, Kestip dutifully gave you all of his most recent fernpaper orders…including one order that actually came from his neighbor, this absent Suberek! A transfer of inventory, in a way, from Kestip to Suberek. For six fernpaper panels! That’s quite a lot. This is the fourth order I mentioned. And this is our best candidate.”

Strovi, mystified by this rush of names and dates and numbers, looked to me for help.

I sighed and asked, “Ma’am…What’s the significance of all this?”

“The significance, Din, is the size of the order,” she said. “Kestip sold this now-missing Suberek a lot of fernpaper, and at a high price. Almost as if Suberek had gotten a very, very big order of his own, larger than his own inventory, that he was in a hurry to fill.” She turned to me, grinning. “And then there is the date. For this transaction took place seven days before the breach.”

Comprehension wriggled into my skull. “The day after we think the ten Engineers were poisoned…” I said.

“Yes. Suberek was apparently given a very big, frantic fernpaper order from some mysterious person just after the Engineers were poisoned. So big was this order, in fact, that he had to buy some panels off of his neighbor to fulfill it! It’s rather like how the groundskeeper hurried to replace the fernpaper door just after Commander Blas was poisoned—but far, far larger. And yet now, why…Suberek doesn’t answer the door, even when the Legion comes knocking.”

Strovi sat forward, looking alarmed.

“You think this Suberek might be in danger, ma’am?” I asked.

“I would at least like to discover his whereabouts,” she said. “And I would like to find out where this order was sent to. For that site is likely either where this Jolgalgan brought her poison, or where the poisoning itself happened.” Her blindfolded face turned to Strovi. “It’s late afternoon now. We’ve burned up almost all the day just digging through papers. I shall notify the rest of the investigation team of what we’ve found—but the curfew extends to everyone in the city except Legion personnel, correct?”

“That’s correct, ma’am,” he said.

“Then I would like to see if you could escort young Din here to this Suberek’s fernpaper mill to check in on him. And bring the Engineers’ reagents key as well, Din—just in case you find out where that order went.” She raised a finger. “But before you go, Din—a word?”

---

—

I WAITED FOR the door to shut before asking, “How went today, ma’am?”

“Inconclusive,” she sighed. “Miljin found the corpse, and the money, and the wall pass. He was outraged and shocked. He then brought it to Uhad, who was similarly outraged and shocked. Uhad showed it to Kalista, who was also very outraged and shocked. Then Miljin departed to bring Nusis in—I suspect you passed him as he left—and I expect she, too, will be appropriately outraged and shocked. I have done a lot of insipid pretending today, Din, but I have not yet detected a false note from any of our colleagues. All have reacted as they should.”

“Then do you trust them now?”

“Oh, no. I continue to feel something is amiss here. I just don’t know what it is. Yet still—tonight, stay sharp. We must establish the death scene, and there is most certainly someone out there who wishes you not do that. Strovi seems a solid sort, but…keep your hand close to your sword.”

I paused. “My sword is, ah…still made of wood, ma’am.”

She frowned and cocked her head. “Oh. Well…in that case, make sure your boots are laced up proper, boy, so you can run like hell.”