AS AFTERNOON TURNED TO evening, Ana, Captain Miljin, and I lounged in the courtyard of the Iudex tower, sipping clar-tea and listening to the troops filing in and out of the city. Miljin had brought Ana her list of Legionnaires altered for strength, and while she read I related the interviews to him, one after another.

He shook his head when I finished. “Poor old Uhad…They should have transferred him out of here years ago. Can’t take too many wet seasons, the engravers. They don’t age well. But I can’t find nary a thing in what you’ve told me that helps me make sense of what’s going on.”

“It’s all very tangled, yes,” said Ana quietly. She sat back and lifted her face to the cloudy skies. “There are, I think, three different crimes we are now investigating.” She raised a finger. “There are the poisonings—Blas, Kaygi Haza, and the ten Engineers. For this, we have a likely candidate—Jolgalgan—and though she may have involved more accomplices in her works, it is she that we are the closest to catching now.”

“We are?” I said, surprised.

Her finger swiveled to me. “Wait! Wait. I am not done yet.” She extended a second finger. “Then there is Kaygi Haza. He has committed some foul deed, something to do with Blas and Oypat. But I can’t yet see the shape or the why of it. Regarding this, all I have are suspicions, and very little proof at all. We are not helped that these events took place over a decade ago.”

“We don’t think the Hazas…well…introduced the contagion to Oypat, do we?” I asked. “That they poisoned the canton like one might a person?”

Miljin shook his head. “The shit with Oypat is well-documented. The idiot who brewed up dappleglass to make paper was drummed out of the Apoth Iyalet, and nearly got tossed in prison. The Hazas’ touch doesn’t lie there.”

“No,” said Ana. “But there is something there. Something they wish to hide, which touches all these other murders.” Then she extended a third pale finger. “And then there is the fernpaper miller, Suberek, and Blas’s secretary, Rona Aristan. Both with holes in their heads—and, increasingly, evidence that connects them to the Haza clan.” She dropped her fingers. “Ironically, for these murders, I am most certain of the motive, and the nature of the killer. But, unfortunately, I think we have the least chance of catching this culprit.”

I looked back and forth between Miljin and Ana. Miljin did not look surprised at all, and though both of them appeared troubled, they did not say any more.

“You are?” I said. “You know who killed Suberek and Aristan, ma’am?”

“Somewhat. As does Captain Miljin, I believe.”

I glanced at Miljin, who had a somber look on his face.

“Then…who is it?” I asked.

“That answer is complex,” she sighed. “Before we get into it, I would like to test out a theory I have…”

“About what, ma’am?”

“About you, Din.” She turned to Miljin. “Would you be ready, Captain?”

Miljin looked surprised. Then he sighed. “Are you sure about this, ma’am?”

“Very,” said Ana. “I am most curious. Are you ready, Captain?”

“Hell. I guess. Stand up, boy,” he said. He began unbuckling his scabbard from his side. “And take my sword.” He handed the sheathed blade out to me.

Ana cocked her head. “I thought you were going to see what he could do in combat?”

“Figured this was safer, ma’am,” said Miljin. “Less chance we accidentally cut our own heads off. Take it, boy.”

I eyed the scabbard. “For…for what, sir?”

“For a test. Gonna see how easy it is for you to remember how to get this sword out.”

I hesitantly took the scabbard from him. I was shocked at how light it felt. The blade within must have weighed hardly more than a feather.

He saw the look on my face and grinned. “Made from the core of a titan’s bone,” he said. “Hard as hell to craft such material. It’s strong, yet light—something to do with the pressure of the water, or some shit. Yet it holds its edge longer than the finest steel.” He tapped the locking mechanism. “It’s valuable enough that I had to get this fancy scabbard made for it. Have to move it right to unsheathe it. I memorized the way, though it took me damned long, but…Let’s see. You take the grip, shut your eyes, and I’ll show you the movements. And we’ll see what you retain.”

He took my hands and guided them through slowly unlocking his sword, the half turns and quarter turns and eighth turns this way and that. I could feel the mechanisms of the sword hilt click with each turn, the little pins sliding in and out. It was monstrously complicated. How Miljin had managed to memorize it, I couldn’t fathom.

“Now,” he said. He locked the blade in place and stepped back. “Open your eyes, and let’s see if you can get it out. Now, Kol. Fast as you can.”

“But you only showed me the once,” I said.

“So? Try.”

I frowned. Then I took the grip in my right hand and held the scabbard in my left; and then my eyes fluttered, and it was like someone breathed air through the muscles in my arm and my hand. I turned the sword, once this way, then the other, and then…

In the flash of a second I had the naked blade before me, pale green like the buds of new leaves upon the tree. I stared at it, shocked by my own success.

“Good job,” Miljin said, but he did not seem at all pleased. He looked to Ana. “He has it, then.”

“He does, it seems,” said Ana.

“I…I have what?” I asked. “What are you all talking about, please?”

“Memory in the muscles,” explained Miljin. “You learn how to move and you remember it, Kol, so you can do it again. Perfectly, every time.”

He said this with some awe, but it sounded more or less in line with all the rest of my alterations. “But…that’s because I’m an engraver, sir,” I said. “Yes?”

“Hell no,” said Ana. “Most engravers capture experiences—sights, sounds, and especially smells—but not movement. They can duplicate speech and words, but they can’t make their bodies act out something complex. That’s much harder. But if you are taught how to move in a way once, Din, then it seems you can move exactly that way again, and again, and again.”

I was thunderstruck for a moment. “That…that can’t be so,” I said finally.

“Oh, yes?” said Ana. “And how did you learn to pick locks? Or duplicate Sazi text? And how did you cut down three men with almost no combat experience? Your muscles remembered. They remembered movements, remembered your training, from long ago. They saw the dangers and moved you about.”

Miljin took his sword back from me and sheathed it. “And though I don’t know who trained you, boy, they must’ve done a proper job.”

I listened to this in quiet shock. Memories of the fight outside the miller’s flooded my mind: the way I’d been pulled, the way my eyes had read the soldiers’ movements, the way my hands and feet had acted as if another had been controlling them. And in a way, I realized they had been: they had been obeying a different Dinios Kol, one from many months ago, when he’d acted out those very motions in training.

“They never tested me for this,” I said.

“That’s because it’s rare as all hell,” Ana said. “So rare even I’ve never seen someone with the knack.”

“But I have,” said Miljin. He gaze grew distant. “I once knew a man who was one of the greatest duelists I’d ever seen. Could parry and dance and fight like no other. And though his arms were corded and strong, he was no crackler—yet almost none could defeat him. I wondered how he’d learned his trade…Though now and again, I noticed that as he fought, his eyes seemed to shimmer. To vibrate in his very skull. An engraver, with the knack. Just like you.”

“So…why is it we wished to confirm this about me?” I said. I returned to sit at the table. “Do you wish me to become some kind of bladesman like that, ma’am?”

Ana turned to Miljin. “Perhaps not a bladesman—but someone capable of defeating the threats we now face?”

Miljin stared at her. “What? No. Hell no. Even with his knack, we can’t manage such a thing in a day, ma’am.”

Ana frowned. “No? Why not?”

“Well…I don’t wish to be impertinent, ma’am, but you can’t just memorize combat as if it were a country jig,” said Miljin. “The boy here almost got killed at the miller’s on account he put his foot in the wrong bit of mud! There’s all kinds of bits you have to learn just by doing. Reading the landscape, the look in the other man’s eye, the type of blade he has. Those aren’t purely movement, so I doubt he can memorize it. If he trains, he can learn quick—but it’d still take time.”

“Damn it all, Miljin,” she snapped. “Then what can you give the boy in the time we have that would actually keep him alive?”

“Beg pardon,” I said, “but—keep me alive?”

They both looked at me, then away. There was an awkward silence.

“Why are you so worried about me, ma’am?” I said. I recalled what we’d been discussing before their little test. “Does this have anything to do with the person who killed Aristan and Suberek?”

Another silence. Ana waved a hand at Miljin as if to say—Well, go on, then.

Miljin stared off into the courtyard for a moment. Then he asked: “You ever heard of a twitch, boy?”

“A twitch? No, sir.”

“Hmph. Wouldn’t expect you to. It’s an altered being. A soldier, suffused for combat. Or they used to be.” He leaned forward conspiratorially, the bench creaking under his girth. “See—a twitch is suffused to possess superhuman explosiveness. Not just strength, for that’s different. Rather, twitches can move faster than most human beings, leaping forward like a mantis snapping a moth from a flower.”

“What might you mean by ‘used to be’ soldiers, sir?” I asked.

“Well, it’s one thing to have strength,” said Miljin. He tapped his arm. “You can alter muscles and ligaments to support that pretty good. But speed…that wears you down. And that’s what happened to twitches. The more they moved, the more their very joints and bones dissolved, their flesh unraveling like a shoddy scarecrow in the wind. Apoths put some kind of healing graft in them to try to keep them upright, but there was some kind of problem with that, too…”

“Contagion,” said Ana. “Most healing augmentations, ironically, are quite susceptible to contagion. Very active blood is good for healing, but also for spreading mold or fungi throughout the whole of your body, apparently.”

“That was it,” said Miljin. “Anyways, Apoths figured that it wasn’t worth it. Not when they had folks like me who were easier and cheaper to make and maintain. But the Hazas…Rumor had it that the Hazas employed a twitch or two. Ones that looked like ordinary folk but could be called upon at a moment’s notice, when the Hazas had a problem.”

“A problem,” I echoed. “You mean…when the Hazas needed someone dead.”

“One way of putting it,” he said.

“You’re saying…You’re truly saying the Hazas use some kind of immensely altered assassins?” I said. “All across the Empire?”

“It’s a rumor,” he said. “The Iudex could never find evidence of it. So a rumor it stayed.” He shot a glance at Ana. “But I also heard there was a series of killings in the Sazi lands a few months back. Folk found with holes drilled in their heads. Folk on the wrong end of the Hazas. No one could figure who could have done the deed and vanished in such a fashion…except, maybe, a twitch.”

I glanced at Ana as well. Her face stayed turned to the sky, and she said nothing.

“And…that’s what you wanted to train me for, ma’am?” I said. “In case I meet this twitch?”

“You meet a twitch, there’s no training I can offer that’d save you, even if we had months and years to do it,” said Miljin. “They were supposed to be unbeatable in combat—for about a minute a day, mind. After that, their muscles wore out and they had to recover.” He shrugged. “If you last that long, maybe you can stand a chance. But my best advice is stay the hell away from them—if a twitch really is here.”

“And I suspect one is,” said Ana. “For there are many people the Hazas would likely want dead here in Talagray. Namely, anyone who could link them with the deaths of Blas and the ten Engineers, and the breach.”

“Like Aristan,” I said. “But what about Suberek?”

“Well, there I have conjecture,” said Ana. “But pretty solid conjecture. My guess is—when Fayazi Haza took over after her father, she panicked. First thing she did was try to get rid of the evidence. That meant burning her father’s corpse—but also getting rid of all the stained fernpaper. She ordered new panels from Suberek, then replaced all the ones in the bath house. But then the prime sons of the clan sent in the heavy to take over and clean up—the twitch. The twitch identified Suberek as a link, so they promptly took care of him.”

I listened to this, thinking. “So…where is this twitch? And what does he look like?”

“No one knows,” said Miljin. “It could look like any regular fella. They don’t appear augmented at all, really.”

Then my skin went cold. “Wait. Could the twitch have been in the halls of the Hazas while I was there?”

Ana shrugged. “It’s entirely possible.”

“And…you knew, ma’am? You knew I was going to be in the company of an assassin? And you didn’t warn me?”

“If I’d warned you,” said Ana, “you’d have acted paranoid, like any reasonable soul would. And that could have put you in real peril—if the twitch was there. Which I am not yet convinced of.” She turned her face east. “They could be here, in Talagray, masquerading as an Iyalet officer. Or perhaps a simple miller, like Suberek. We do not yet know. I’d hoped to give you an advantage, Din, should you cross paths with such a being—but perhaps simply knowing what you can do can help.”

---

—

“AS LURID AS all this shit is,” said Miljin, “I’m most interested in one bit you mentioned, ma’am…namely, that we’re close to catching Jolgalgan. Which is, frankly, news to me.”

“Oh, but we are,” sighed Ana. She returned to parsing through the papers before her. “I just have one last bit of information to figure out…”

I eyed the papers. “And you’ll find it in lists of Legionnaires augmented for strength, ma’am?”

“Naturally. Have neither of you arrived at it? Captain Miljin here ought to know, at least,” she said, grinning. “Being as it was his damned interview that tipped me off. Don’t you recall?”

Miljin stared at her blankly. “No…?”

“When you went to the medikkers’ bay and did your interrogations,” she said, “you were told the dead Captain Kilem Terez had been worried someone very unusual had been following him.”

“Why…yes,” said Miljin, startled. “A…a crackler. That was what he’d said.”

“And you thought the idea mad at the time—but what if it wasn’t?” asked Ana.

My mouth opened in surprise—yet Miljin remained unmoved. “A man ten span tall was following this Engineer,” he said. “Around the streets of Talagray. We are to take this seriously?”

“It’s very simple,” said Ana. “Jolgalgan got onto the grounds, made a hole, and secreted herself away until the party. But how did she get past the walls? Well, Din’s reports, and our interviews with our witnesses, have forced me to conclude that the only way our poisoner got onto the estate grounds was through the sluice gates.”

I nodded as I began to understand. “But the sluice gates are heavy…”

“Right! Yet someone very, very strong might have lifted the sluice gate just enough to allow Jolgalgan inside. And, Miljin, you were told that Terez said he’d been seeing a rather suspicious crackler about—one with yellow hair. And who else has yellow hair?”

“Jolgalgan,” I said. “She has pale yellow hair…”

“She does!” said Ana. “Because she is from Oypat. As is, I think we can now assume, this mysterious crackler who helped her break in. Two Oypatis, taking apart the Empire from within Talagray…The theory that Jolgalgan is out for some kind of bloody revenge for the death of her canton grows ever stronger!” She turned a page. “And thus, I now look through the list of all the folk in Talagray augmented for strength. We find an Oypati crackler, then we find Jolgalgan.” She paused, very briefly. “Along with any other collaborator she might be working with. I just need a name. Just one name to hunt down…” She grimaced, and her stomach growled noisily. “By hell, what time is it? I’m so damned famished I can hardly think!”

I beckoned to a porter standing at attention across the courtyard, waving him over.

“We need a meal here,” I told him.

“What might you prefer, sir?” the porter asked.

“Flesh. Beef or fish, preferably, and as recently slaughtered as possible. It doesn’t have to have been cooked, just oiled and salted and sliced thinly.”

Ana paused as she turned the page, a smile playing at the edges of her mouth. “You’re beginning to know me well, boy. But have it brought to my rooms, please. I will need to study this list in a place with a little less stimulation…”

I dropped a few talints into the porter’s hand, and he bowed and trotted off.

Ana began messily piling her papers. “I shall finish my work and find a name. But pursuing this crackler will not be simple. An Apoth like Jolgalgan will have many invisible ways of murdering you, possibly beyond dappleglass. Thus, once I have a name, I shall contact the Apoths to ready a contagion crew.”

Miljin’s face darkened. “A contagion crew…By the Harvester, I never wished to ride out with one of them.”

“We have no choice. I’ll not have you or Din choking on your own blood because Jolgalgan set graft trips in your path.” She stood. “Come to me in the morning, and I will give you your orders. Perhaps we eliminate one of our three mysteries tomorrow. But Miljin…” She lifted her blindfolded face. “Unless I’m mistaken, we do have an hour or so of light left…”

He rolled his eyes. “I’ll show the boy a few tricks, ma’am.”

“Very good. Thank you. But one last thing…Din? Come here.”

I did so, extending my arm to her as I was accustomed. Yet her fingers pawed up my shoulder, then to my head, where she plucked out three of my black hairs.

I winced. “Ma’am! What was that fo—”

“Oh, relax,” she said. “I need some black hairs. And my and Miljin’s hair is too pale. Only yours could do.”

“Do for what, ma’am?”

“To keep me alive, of course. For I’m relatively sure someone shall try to poison me as well, and that right soon—yet these shall protect me.” She grinned. “Good night!”

---

—

AS THE EVENING grew full dark, Miljin showed me a few ugly little moves of his; not really fighting techniques as much as dirty tricks, ways to hobble or hamper your opponent. My particular favorite was one where, if you had time to identify a thrust, you could deflect the blow and angle your blade in such a manner that you trapped their sword with your crossguard, and they impaled their shoulder upon its point. I did it so well that Miljin had to stop himself from piercing his flesh. “That’s enough of that one, then!” he said, shuddering.

And as he guided me through the movements, I began to see what they had been trying to show me: every gesture, every position, every shift, and every turn seemed to sink into my very bones, engraved in my body and flesh—but the knack was as limited as it was comprehensive, for I could only duplicate those exact movements. If the fight called for something I hadn’t memorized, then I was instantly vulnerable.

“Good,” said Miljin, sweating mightily after a few minutes of sparring. “But don’t let this swell your ego. None of these dirty tricks will do you any good against a twitch, or a crackler. Try and spar with him tomorrow and the fella will rip you apart. Now let us sup, and to bed. There are many ways to an early grave in this canton, and pairing a hungry belly with a tired mind is surely one of them.”

He walked me back to the Iudex tower entrance, the Fisher’s Hook twinkling and glimmering far above.

“Do you think she meant it, sir?” I said. “That someone will try to poison her?”

“At this point, if your immunis claimed all the world were an aplilot and a giant leviathan was about to take a bite out of it, I’d fucking believe her,” he said. He squinted up at the Iudex tower. “In fact, I wonder if she knows the truth of all that’s happened. Or if she even planned to be here.”

“What do you mean, sir?”

“An Iudex officer with such a history with the Hazas? Popping up right when Kaygi Haza gets murdered? She knows more than she’s telling. Question is when she tells us.”

“As well as if we survive,” I said. “That question bothers me a bit more now, sir.”

“True,” he said. “But that’s as Talagray is. The fields of these lands are wet with the blood of many officers. And though we keep hoping the Empire grows more civilized, somehow it finds clever new ways to stay savage. Yet you’ve an advantage, Kol.”

“Because of my knack?”

“No. Because Dolabra’s decided to look out for you. Though she’s mad, count yourself lucky to be in her shadow.”

“I’m in danger because I’m in her shadow, sir.”

He laughed. “Suppose that’s a good point!”

We walked on. It was a queer thing, to know I had this knack; but any excitement I had was drowned in dread of all the threats before us. It was all too easy to imagine some shadowy figure lifting a stiletto to my skull and drilling a hole behind my ear, leaving a tiny, trickling spring of dark blood.

Finally we came to the tower entrance.

“It’s a defect as much as it is an advantage, you know,” Miljin said, “or they used to say so.”

“Pardon, sir?”

“Memory in the muscles, I mean.” He squinted at me. “Apparently it only happens to engravers who have trouble engraving other shit—or so I’m told. The duelist I mentioned, he couldn’t remember songs at all. Not a bit of them. They were like a big blank space in his mind. Couldn’t whistle or tap his foot, neither. I guess it’s like everything else in the Empire—there’s always a trade-off.”

He waited for me to say something, but I did not speak.

“But you seem a keen sort,” he said. “Suppose you just got lucky, Kol.”

Then he told me good night, turned, and stomped off to his quarters.