CHAPTER 22
“IT ALL BEGINS TO show,” said Uhad wearily, “a rather appalling pattern.”
I glanced about the room as we listened. All of the primary team was there, standing amid the shadowy machinery of the little mill: Uhad leaned gloomily at the head of the worktable, like a starving blue stork staring into a fishless creek; seated to his right was Ana, blindfolded and bent, her fingers probing the indentations and scars on the worktable surface; across from Ana sat Nusis, still pert and cheery and nodding even at this late hour, her red coat pressed and impeccable; and there at the back of the workshop, half-lost in the bunches of drying parchfern, stood Kalista, somehow glamorous and glittering despite all the gloom about her, her clay pipe clutched in her mouth. She seemed to very much resent being brought here: the courtesan dove sulking in its cage, perhaps.
“We can now safely conclude we are pursuing two killers, I think,” said Uhad. “One who kills with dappleglass, and one who kills with a spike to the skull. The dappleglass killer has apparently vanished, but this new one appears to still be about…and killing quite enthusiastically.” He paused, his face grim. “Yet before we speculate further, I would prefer a more experienced eye review this most recent body.” He turned to Nusis. “I believe as an Apoth, Immunis, you are somewhat used to the handling of cadavers…”
Nusis’s cheery smile vanished. She sighed, shrugged off her red Apoth’s coat, carefully folded it, and laid it on her chair. “I shall go see,” she said, then retreated into the reeking hallways.
“Won’t you need a lantern?” called Miljin after her.
“No,” said her voice in answer. “I can see perfectly well in the dark.”
There was a surprised silence. Then Miljin scoffed and shook his head. “Damn Apoths…”
“Are we sure that we have two killers?” asked Kalista. “The first person felled by this spike to the skull was Blas’s secretary, yes. And that seems likely related to Blas’s own horrid corruption, eliminating anyone who might know things they oughtn’t. But why Suberek? Why murder a simple fernpaper miller?”
“I cannot imagine,” confessed Uhad. “Unless Blas talked to this fernpaper miller…Yet that challenges the imagination.”
Ana cocked her head, grinning. “Or we are being too conservative in our estimation of ‘cleaning up’!”
All eyes slowly turned to her.
“What might you mean by that?” asked Uhad.
She shrugged. “Perhaps there is someone out there who does not want us finding out how or when or where any of these poisonings took place—for that would lead to yet more discoveries of corruption. If we assume that, and also assume Suberek provided fernpaper to help cover up the killings…well, then it would make very good sense to kill him!”
There was an uneasy silence.
“If that is so,” said Uhad, “we must find the destination of Suberek’s last delivery.”
“Agreed,” said Ana. “Din—before you join the search…” She held up a finger. “A word, please.”
I moved to her as the others started to dig through the mill. “Yes, ma’am?”
“I would like for you to take me to the stables, if only for a moment.”
I held out my arm. She grasped it and I led her outside.
—
THE BODIES WERE gone now. All that was left was mud, blood, and the handful of Legion officers standing at the wall.
Ana stopped in the middle of the yard, face still angled to me, pale and cadaverous in the moonlight. “How are you doing? Are you well?”
“I’m all right, ma’am,” I said.
“What? Absurd. People tried to kill you, and you apparently killed them instead. How could you possibly be all right?”
“It was all very fast,” I said quietly. “I didn’t think at all while it…while it happened.”
There was a short silence, broken only by the muttering of the Legionnaires just past the gate.
“Well, you aren’t limping,” she said tersely. “Your pulse in your arm is strong and steady. And you aren’t gasping for breath. So you’re not hurt.”
“I’d have told you if I was, ma’am.”
“Yes, but you’re the dutiful sort of stupid young man who would hide an injury out of honor,” she snapped. “And I wished to be sure.”
I looked at her, surprised at the anger in her voice. Her wiry fingers dug into my arm like she was trying to hold me still.
“Have I done something wrong, ma’am?” I asked.
“Miljin said you killed two and disabled one,” she said. “Is that correct?”
“Possibly. I…I didn’t stay to confirm,” I said stiffly.
“He also said Strovi claims you fought remarkably well. That you said you remembered how to fight. Is that correct?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Describe it,” she said sharply. “Describe how that felt.”
I did so, struggling to articulate the queer feeling of my muscles remembering the movements, and then moving me about through space like I were furniture being moved in a room.
She nodded when I finished. “And back in Daretana. The way you made tea for me—you did it the exact same way, every time. Right down to the turn of the pestle.”
“Pardon, ma’am?”
“And then later, when Uxos tried to kill me. You moved quickly and attacked him quickly. Practically without thinking at all.”
I said nothing.
“And then there is your lockpicking,” she said. “You do not remember how to do it, exactly. You simply remember the movements.”
“Have I done something wrong, ma’am?” I asked again.
“No. But you’ve done something interesting. And to be honest, of all the things I’d expected to find interesting here, Din, I had not thought you’d be among them. Nor had I wished you to be. Thank Sanctum they were only deserters! When I first heard you’d been attacked at Suberek’s, I…I thought…”
“Thought what?”
She shook her head. Even though she was blindfolded, I could see fear in her face—the first time I’d ever seen any fear in it at all.
“It’s nothing,” she said.
“Doesn’t seem to be nothing, ma’am.”
“Well, it is, damn it! And now that I think of it, you did do something wrong, Din! You should have checked the building completely before going down into that basement!”
“Why?” I said.
“Because you didn’t know if you were truly alone in the house!” she said. “There could have been someone else in there with you, and you might not have known! Another deserter or…or something worse. You need to be smarter, child. I don’t get on well without an assistant, and I damned sure don’t want to lose you now!” She poked me in the chest. “People have been killed in this city for knowing things they shouldn’t—like Suberek! And Aristan! Yet it is our job to know things. Act accordingly to make sure you aren’t cleaned up as well!”
“You think this new killer is foolish enough to come after an Iudex officer, ma’am?”
“Of course. Of course!”
That flicker of fear to her face again. I remembered what Miljin had told me: Rumor has it, Dolabra’s previous assistant investigator ran into the wrong end of a sword…
“Now focus, boy,” said Ana. “Let us search the mill carefully. And try not to make it too hard for me to keep you alive!”
—
WE SEARCHED THE mill for an hour, all together. We could find almost no writing at all: no documents, no ledgers, no bills of sale, nothing. The only thing of note was Nusis’s report as she emerged from the basement of the mill. “A perforation at the base of the skull—and based on the bleeding of the man’s left eye, the weapon nearly penetrated straight through. A spike of some kind, I think. For the edges of the perforation are quite smooth.”
“Then that would suggest the murderer is physically augmented, yes?” said Uhad. He nodded toward Miljin. “Perhaps like the captain here.”
I glanced at Miljin—yet I saw he was staring at Ana, a worried look on his face.
“I would say so, yes,” said Nusis. “A very powerful individual—but not a large one. Not if they could fit in that basement. No crackler or augmented Legionnaire could manage that, I think. It’s very strange.”
“Disturbing…” Uhad sighed and rubbed at his eyes. “Yet we still don’t know where Suberek sent his last shipment of fernpaper.”
“I can’t find a damn thing,” said Kalista around her pipe. Her breath shivered with smoke as she spoke. “This is a professional, surely. They removed everything of note. From the look of it, I almost doubt if Suberek knew how to write.”
Ana rocked forward, her hands still probing the workshop table. “No,” she said softly. “He knew how to write. And he did a lot of it right here.”
There was a long silence as everyone turned to look at her, her hands placed on the slab of wood like a reedwitch telling fortunes at a canton fair.
“You…” Kalista laughed, incredulous. “You aren’t suggesting you can…You can, what, feel what was written there?”
“I can feel many things,” said Ana quietly. “He was a very hard writer, you see. Pressed his ashpen with tremendous force…The tricky thing is identifying what was recent.” Her index finger paused on one spot of the scarred table. “Here, for example…Wrote down an order for two panels…Dated sometime in the month of Hajnal. I think. Tricky to read this…”
Uhad looked to Nusis. “Is this really possible?”
“Of course,” said Nusis. “I know some sensitivity grafts help sculptors and surgeons find the weaknesses in many materials.”
“If we get a length of ashpen,” said Ana, “and a sheet of thin fernpaper, I can discover more.”
Miljin and I fetched these for her. Then we watched as Ana carefully ran the length of ashpen over the scarred table, covering its surface with a layer of fine, black powder.
“And now the paper…” she said.
Like gentry servants laying down a table spread, we took a thin sheet of fernpaper and slowly placed it on the table. Then Ana took a piece of shootstraw and ran it back and forth, pressing every inch of the paper to the table.
“There,” she said. “Now if we take it away…”
Miljin and I lifted the paper and turned it over. Everyone gasped quietly—for there on the other side it was all black and gray, yet it was covered in mangled white writings, like the inverse of an imprint.
“Probably looks a mess,” said Ana. “The trick is to look for which bit of writing is clearest. That will be the most recent one. The last thing Suberek ever wrote in his life, probably…And I hope that will tell us where he delivered his order.”
I was utterly useless here—normal writing shivered horribly to my eyes, and this was even less clear—but Miljin, Uhad, Nusis, and Kalista crouched over the paper, studying it like it was some holy text, until Nusis, whose eyes were best, pointed to one corner.
“Here…” she said quietly. “This looks promising. A good bit of writing, running over all the others…Very hard, and very clear. Like what they were writing mattered.”
Miljin squinted at it. “Yeah…not an address. It almost looks like directions.”
“Yes.” Nusis held the lantern close. “North on Ekipti…” she read aloud. “Then this next bit I can’t read at all…But then here. West on Petros. Then a right, and a right…And then it seems to stop.”
I summoned the map of Talagray in my mind, and found the street quickly. “It’s directing us to a long road running north and south on the west end of the city,” I said. “It had no names on any maps I’ve seen. But that must have been where Suberek brought his last shipment.”
Uhad turned away, his expression deeply troubled. “I know this road,” he said quietly. “That is where the gentryfolk reside.”
“And Din,” said Ana, “has a very expensive reagents key.” She looked at me—not a grin, but a small, clever smirk. “Perhaps he and Miljin ought to go to this street and see which door it opens?”
—
MILJIN AND I trooped off into the streets, rejoined by Strovi, for it was still dark and we needed his privileges to pass. We strode on, following the directions I had engraved in my memory, leaving the fortifications of the east and the fretvine towers behind, and approaching the gentle, rising hills in the west, where the city sprawled out.
“Gentryfolk…” Miljin shook his head. “Of all the people to be caught up in this, this puts bad water in my belly.”
“Why’s that, sir?” I asked.
“You probably don’t see too many of their ilk in Daretana,” he said. “But gentryfolk wield enormous powers in the Empire. You own a lot of farmland, you get a lot of say with the people who matter.” He glanced at Strovi. “Though the captain here knows this better than I, surely.”
Strovi said nothing. I gave Miljin a quizzical look.
“Strovi comes from a gentry family,” Miljin confided to me. “Very important folk in the west of the Tala canton, y’see.”
I turned to Strovi, surprised. He glanced at me sidelong—I noticed he wasn’t smiling as he so often did. “I am Legion first and foremost, Miljin,” he said stiffly. “Just as you were. And I am proud of it.”
“True.” Miljin bowed to him theatrically. “Your record and bravery are beyond reproach. But that is why you’ve no great augmentations—yes, Captain?”
Strovi’s face colored slightly. “Miljin…”
“Too many augmentations makes it damned hard to engender children,” said Miljin to me, offhandedly. “And the Strovi clan has every intention of extending their line, of course.”
“Damn it, Miljin,” snapped Strovi. “Mind your own affairs!”
I cleared my throat. “Perhaps,” I said, “it’d be better if we focused on the case at hand…”
Miljin snorted and gazed at the hills before us. “The case, yes…Though I grow pessimistic. If the gentry is tangled up in this, Kol, things shall get tricky fast.”
Dawn bloomed in the east, and I began to see what he meant: atop the hills before us were many enormous, fine houses, gabled and bedecked with mai-lanterns and encircled by high fretvine walls. Many featured tall bird-perch gates before the houses—ceremonial, double-beamed structures wrought of wood and painted bright red. I had heard of them before, and was aware they indicated gentryhood, and the emperor’s favor. They were so closely entwined with the gentry that the symbol of them was often painted on gentry contracts: two perpendicular lines with two sloping, arched lines running between them. I was frankly awed by the sight of them, and the grand houses behind them.
Miljin spat on the ground. “You can smell the money in the air here. Blow your nose and talints shall come tumbling out.”
We continued walking along the gentry road. Tall walls ran on either side of us, fencing off the gentrylands. Each one was paired with a main gate—a common construction of wood and iron—as well as a reagents gate, allowing servants to come and go at any hour. I approached these carefully, my reagents key held out. They were amazing constructions in their own right, often made of twisted roots or flowering fungi or coils of vines, all awaiting the proper key, and the proper signal.
But not the one I bore. Though we walked along the gentry road until the sun broke free of the horizon, none of the reagent gates opened to me.
“Odd to say this failure brightens my mood,” muttered Miljin. “I hope we walk this street and find naught at all.”
Then Strovi spoke, in a strangled voice: “There is one gate remaining.”
Miljin looked at him, puzzled. Then his expression gave way to horror. “Titan’s taint. I pray it isn’t…”
I saw the gate ahead. It was enormous and towering, a huge, curious, coiling root that plugged up the opening in the wall, layered with tendrils of bright yellow vines and dotted with green growths.
I approached it slowly, the Engineers’ reagents key held out before me. The vines trickled, twitched. The massive root trembled. And then, as if it were a living knot, the whole thing slowly unwound, falling away, leaving the entry clear, and through the rounded gap I glimpsed dark green hills, and there in the distance a many-gabled house that was nothing short of palatial, standing amid tall, white-trunked trees that shone in the light of the dawning sun.
How familiar it felt. Almost the same as that day in Daretana when I had gone to see Blas’s body.
My eye fell upon the bird-perch gate before the house, and the insignia painted there: a feather standing between two tall, white trees.
My eyes fluttered. I had engraved that sight within my memory mere weeks ago.
It felt the same as that day in Daretana, I realized—because in many ways it was the same.
“By hell,” muttered Strovi. “The halls of the Hazas…The Engineers were meeting there?”
“Of all the fucking places,” Miljin said grimly, “it just had to be this one.” He spat on the ground. “That damned house sees more important people than the Senate of the Sanctum. We are about to go dallying in the affairs of the mighty, friends.”
But though they seemed surprised, I found I was not. It all felt very obvious, now that I thought of it.
I recalled what Ana had said to me just after arresting Uxos: Blas was in bed with the Hazas…and the Hazas definitely have a foothold in the capital of the canton, in Talagray. If we follow this all the way, it may take us there.
“She knew,” I said.
“What?” said Strovi.
“She knew where it had happened,” I said. I turned and strode away, and the reagents gate closed behind me. “She has known all along.”