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.”

“I guess post my money as fast as you can, then. Sanctum knows if I’ll get to send another.”

He slipped the dispensation in the envelope and placed it in the pile of outgoing post. “You’re a good son, Kol.”

I hesitated to respond. My family thought me neither beautiful nor bright, and I mailed my dispensations home out of filial duty rather than love or fondness. “What makes you say that? Half the Sublimes here must be sending their pay home.”

“More than half. But I only tell the good ones secrets.”

“Oh? Like what?”

He crooked a finger, and I leaned close. “Take the back way to your quarters tonight,” he said. “Some route most wouldn’t bother taking.”

“I see…Can you give me more than that?”

“Captain Thalamis came by looking for you. From the Apoths. Asking about something you did today. Didn’t like the look of him. I’d avoid him if you can.”

“Thalamis?” I said. “Why’s he coming after me? I’m not in Sublime training anymore, and he’s not my commanding officer anymore.”

“Not sure he knows that. Bastard thinks he’s commander of all he sees.” The coal in his pipe flared hot, and smoke streamed from his nostrils. “Just saying—take the back way home tonight, Kol. And stay safe.”

I thanked him and slipped away.

---

—

I DID TAKE the back way home, the chimes of Ana’s contraption filling my mind and Stephinos’s words echoing in my ears—Read the mud.

How odd it felt. Commander Blas’s death was easily the biggest thing to ever happen to me in my career; yet the chimes and those three words made it seem very small in comparison to what the rest of the Empire did.

Every wet season, the great leviathans rose in the eastern seas and silently, steadily approached the coasts. And every wet season, the bombards and ballistas of the Legions and the great walls of the Engineers kept them back. That was the only reason the people of the cantons tolerated the taxes and drafts and commands of the Empire of Khanum: it was the Empire and the Empire alone that could marshal the resources and maintain the sea walls to keep the leviathans out. Yet when every wet season ended, the folk of the Empire did not breathe easy, but instead asked—What about the next season? What about then?

That was what it was like to be a citizen of the Empire of Khanum, especially in the Outer Rim. You lived in endless anxiety, a constant state of crisis.

It often made it a little hard to go about your everyday tasks, frankly. What was the point of fetching food or fixing up your house or caring for your family when a titan could break through the walls and kill you and a thousand others like you in a matter of hours? What was the point of doing anything, really?

Yet the Empire survived because the emperor told us this was not true. Everywhere you saw his effigy, it was accompanied by the words Sen sez imperiya. And though this was written in Khanum—an old language almost no one spoke anymore—we all knew what it said: You are the Empire.

And, more important, we understood what that meant: We are all here because of what all of us do.

Sometimes that made the days a little easier. Even when solving the occasional gruesome murder, I supposed. Yet I had become a Sublime and labored at my position not simply to support the Empire, but to make enough coin to pay off my father’s countless debts and move my family out of the Outer Rim of the Empire—too close to the shores and sea walls of the east—and purchase land within the third ring. Someplace where my family would have more walls between themselves and the titans, where they would be safe.

If there even was such a thing as being safe in the Empire these days.

---

—

I WAS EXHAUSTED by the time I got back to my quarters. I’d used the muddiest, worst paths, and always kept an eye to make sure the way ahead and behind was deserted. When I finally approached the apprentices’ quarters, I sighed with relief.

Then I heard a sharp voice snap, “Kol!”

I stopped short. Captain Alixos Thalamis emerged from the darkness of my quarters entryway, his red Apoth cloak swirling about him.

Son of a bitch, I thought. He’d been waiting for me.

“Stay right where you are, boy!” Thalamis bellowed. “Do not even think of moving!”

I stood up straight at attention and waited. He skulked forward, a predator’s pace, hands behind his back, the crossguard of his officer’s sword winking like a cold star. I avoided meeting his gaze, but he stuck his smooth, handsome, dead-eyed face close to mine.

“I hear,” he said, “that you caught yourself some real work today, Kol.”

As this wasn’t a question, I stayed silent.

“Answer me, damn it!” he snapped. “Is that correct?”

“I was assigned a death scene today, yes, sir,” I said.

“Really?” he said. “And how did you manage it, Kol?”

“As my master had directed, sir.”

“So why did I receive multiple formal complaints,” he said, “from some esteemed personages, Kol, indicating that you did not manage it at all? Because it sounds like you, as you so often do, fucked it up beyond comprehension!”

The face of Madam Gennadios flashed in my memories.

Friends in the Iyalets, she’d said. Now I knew who she’d meant.

“Keeping the servants of the Hazas held prisoner in their own place of work?” Thalamis said. “Questioning them like they were the plotters of some crime? Do you have any idea what you’re doing?”

“There was a death, sir,” I said. “A death that could have been caused by contagion.”

“Contagion that we Apoths didn’t find,” he said. “Are you aware that you’re still an apprentice to the investigator, Signum? You’re too damned old for it, but that’s what you are. And you do remember your final assignment will need to be approved by the Apoths, including myself. It is we who manage the altered organisms of the Empire. As you are one such organism, your future belongs to me.” He stepped closer. I could feel his breath on my cheek, caught the aroma of pepper and the gamy scent of lamb. “Do you understand what it would do to your position to have complaints from the Hazas on your formal record?”

I did not answer. I hated myself only a little for how fast my heart was beating. It’d been months since I’d first trained as a Sublime under Thalamis, but still I remembered all the whippings he had doled out to me. To have him so close now brought memories of the slash of the cane bubbling to the front of my mind.

“Tell me everything that happened at that house,” Thalamis said. “Now.”

My response was quick and clipped: “It’s against policy to discuss investigations with other officers, sir.”

“I could give a shit!” he said. “You tell me what happened, you tell me what the investigator is planning, and you tell me now!”

I allowed a glance at him. I usually saw malice in Thalamis’s eyes, but this time I spied hunger. The man was here on a mission, and not his own. Interesting.

“Sir,” I said, “you will be able to review all that when I formally submit my report to the Iudex. But it is against Iudex policy to share investigation information now.”

“What was that, Signum?” he growled.

“It’s the policy, sir,” I said. “I cannot discuss it. It might endanger the investigation.”

“You little son of a bitch,” he said. “If I tell you to brief me on what you’ve done, you had damned well better do it!”

“But you are not my commanding officer, sir,” I said stoically. “Not anymore. The Apoths commanded me after my alteration, but that changed when I was assigned to Immunis Dolabra at the Iudex Iyalet. I am only permitted to discuss the death scene with her.”

Thalamis’s eyes went cold and dead. “You think,” he said, “that because you got to such a position with that…with that lunatic, you can hide from me. But let me tell you a story, Kol.”

He started pacing around me in a tight circle. I was reminded of a wolf waiting out a treed squirrel.

“A student arrives at Daretana to be inducted as a Sublime,” he said. “And yet, though he pays his fee for the suffusions, and is granted them, this student remains abysmally, incredibly stupid. Reads slow, writes not at all. Applies to all the Iyalets—Legion, Engineering, Apothetikal, Treasury—but fails all his exams, and fails them miserably. It’s like a child took his tests for him. Soon it’s obvious to everyone that he is the most dunderheaded Sublime to have ever been evaluated, and possibly the dumbest fucking oaf in all of the canton.”

The beat of my blood rose. How wonderful it would be to drive a knife into one of Thalamis’s squinty little eyes.

“But then,” said Thalamis, “the Senate appoints an Iudex Investigator to Daretana. And she requests an engraver. A specialized role, requiring an unusually talented Sublime to fill the post. But then…why, suddenly out of nowhere, this young Sublime swans in and scores the top marks on his Iudex test. An absolutely phenomenal performance—so much so that he’s given another Iudex test, just to confirm it’s real. And again, he gets top marks. And so, this investigator picks him. I’d say it’s remarkable…but that’s the wrong word, isn’t it? I think a better one is unbelievable. Perhaps impossible.”

I focused on my breath, on my posture, on anything but the face before me.

“I will figure out how you cheated, Kol,” said Thalamis. “And when that happens, your time here is deader than a butchered hog. And all your dispensation, and any lands you might be rewarded at the end of your service term, are gone. But before you go, I’ll have you caned—again—just for wasting my time. Is that clear?”

I said nothing.

“Is that clear, Signum?”

“I understand, sir,” I said grudgingly.

He stepped back. “But maybe I won’t need to wait that long, Signum,” he said. “Maybe you’ll piss off the Hazas so much that they’ll find a way to get your apprenticeship terminated.”

He walked away. I stood in the dark street, still standing at attention. I could feel my blood beating in my ears and my breath hot in my nostrils. I watched Thalamis go, wishing it had been he, and not Blas, who’d been torn to pieces by those trees.

Yet I remembered the hunger in his eyes, and his very specific questions.

It suddenly felt like Captain Thalamis was working for the Hazas. That seemed valuable to know.

Yet I wondered—how many other officers were friends of the Hazas? What exactly had I gotten myself into this morning? And what did Ana know?

I supposed I’d find out tomorrow. I turned and slinked off to bed.