I STARED BACKWARD AT the towers of Talagray as our carriage rumbled along, the Plains of the Path and the massive sea walls slowly retreating into the morning mist. I counted the remaining months of the wet season and grappled with the knowledge that in a mere handful of months more another season would come.

“Will it hold?” asked Ana’s voice softly.

I turned back around to her, sitting blindfolded in the seat across from me, with her hands folded pleasantly in her lap.

“Pardon, ma’am?” I said.

“Will it hold—that’s what you’re thinking, yes?” she said.

“Do you read thoughts now, ma’am?”

“Oh, no. It is the obvious thought one might have upon leaving Talagray—or coming to it. Will all those artifices and structures, built from the blood and toil of so many and planned by so many brilliant minds…will they hold in the face of what’s coming?” She cocked her head, grinning. “I wish I could read your thoughts, Din. Instead I’m forced to ask you stupid questions.”

“You’ve the rest of the trip to torment me, ma’am,” I said wryly. “No need to start early.”

“Mm. But I’m curious about one particular question I have for you.”

“And what’s that?”

“I’d like to ask you—what is the Empire, Din?”

I blinked as the carriage bounced along. “Ah…pardon, ma’am?”

“I’ve heard your reports, after all,” she said. “I’ve noticed many people made claims to you that the Empire was this, or that, or functioned in this way…It’s strange, isn’t it? Perhaps the existential nature of the canton provokes it. But I am curious what your conclusions are. What is the Empire, Din? Can you describe it?”

“You don’t really expect me to answer that, do you, ma’am?”

“I’m still your commanding officer. I could order you to do so. But that’d be rather boring.”

I thought about it. “Well…before I came here, ma’am…”

“Yes?”

“I would have told you the Empire was might, and mass, and strength, and scale.”

“And now?”

“Now…now it feels frail, and imperfect, and improvised, and…and coincidental, ma’am. The wrong wind might blow it all apart, should it go untended.”

“Accurate. And I somewhat agree. But I have always rather thought the Empire was wrought in the image of that which it was made to fight.”

“A…a titan, ma’am?”

“Oh, yes. For the Empire is huge. Complex. Often unwieldy and slow. And in many places, weak. A massive colossus, stretching out across the cantons, one in whose shadow we all live…and yet it is prone to wounds, infections, fevers, and ill humors. But its strangest feature is that the more its citizens feel it is broken, the more broken it actually becomes. Just look at Uhad. It must be tended to, as you said. For without this tending, the Empire shall fail. Yet it’s rather tricky to tend to something from inside it, yes?”

I narrowed my eyes at her. “And…what is your role in tending to this colossus, ma’am?”

“Oh, I told you, Din,” she said, smiling dreamily. “When we last rumbled down this very road. It’s the maintenance folk who keep the Empire going. Someone, after all, must do the undignified labor to keep the grand works of our era from tumbling down. I simply perform maintenance, in my own little way. And you have ably assisted me in that, of course.”

We rumbled on in silence for a moment.

I sucked my teeth, thinking. “You once said, ma’am, that there would be a time when you’d tell me many truths.”

“That’s so.”

“Is now such a time?”

“Now?” She pressed a hand against the wall of the carriage, feeling its shuddering. “Now is the time for some truths, should you like to hear them, Din. We can then decide if you’d like to hear more after that.”

“You are no ordinary Iudex Investigator. Are you?”

“That is true. I am not.”

“Not if you were stationed in Daretana to watch the Hazas, as part of some giant plot.”

“That is also true.”

“Though I wonder what you’re going to do in Daretana now, ma’am.”

“Oh, I am not going back to Daretana, Din,” she said. “The Iudex office there will now be closed. It was a very good place to be banished to, but it has served its purpose. Instead, this carriage shall first stop at a small town on the border of the Tala canton. There, I shall discuss the events of the past weeks with the conzulate, who waits for me now.”

I stared at her. “The…the Iudex conzulate? He’s waiting on you?”

“Has been for the past day. I am most eager to debrief him. It was his idea to invent the fiction of my banishment, after all.”

“Wait. And your assistant? Did the twitch kill her, or is she truly alive? Was that all just a story you invented to deceive the Hazas?”

“You do not know her,” sniffed Ana. “And her affairs are her own. I will not divulge her situation to you, as able and admirable as you are, Din.”

I boggled at this for a moment. The idea that a conzulate—one of the giant, ageless beings who were second only to the emperor himself in the imperial hierarchy—was now waiting on Ana was impossible for me to comprehend.

“What will happen after you talk to the conzulate, ma’am?” I asked slowly.

“Well…he will likely give me a new assignment,” she said. “For I am an investigator, but I serve in a very…special division. I am given issues that are either sensitive, inordinately difficult to make sense of, or both. In other words, I do what many folk do in the grand and heavenly Empire of Khanum—I keep things running, in hopes of keeping the walls up. Once I speak to the conzulate, I shall be off to my next task, I suspect. The next crime, the next murder, the next treachery.”

I stared out the window, watching the countryside roll by.

“Yet before I go,” she said, “the conzulate will also likely want to speak to you, Din.”

I said nothing.

“For I will still be in need of an assistant investigator,” she said. “And you did a decent job in Talagray.” She thought for a moment. “Could have been cheerier and smiled a bit more, sure, but still, a good job. I would have you keep doing it, if you prefer.”

My gaze stayed fixed on the countryside. The shimmering veil of the jungle had embraced us once again, and all was dark. I thought of muddy little Daretana, and what few opportunities would await there.

I glanced down at my boots, now worn and stained from all my travels. They didn’t look quite so bad, I thought. Perhaps they would look even better with a bit more wear.

“I bought you something, ma’am,” I said. “A gift.”

“Really?” she said. “Why?”

I handed her a small wooden box. “Felt I owed it to you, after all this.”

She opened the box and sniffed it, then sat up, her body thrumming with elation.

“Moodies!” she said, delighted. “Mood grafts! And are they…”

“The hallucinogenic ones,” I said. “The ones you’re always asking about. I had to visit a very dodgy shop in Talagray to get them. Just please don’t consume one now, ma’am. I suspect that’d make this trip quite a bit less pleasant.”

She cackled with glee. “No, no, and it’d be unwise to attend my debriefing mooded clean out of my skull, Din. Thank you. I do very much appreciate this.”

I smiled wearily. “Perhaps an odd way to begin my duties as your formal assistant—breaking the law before I even start.”

She stowed the little box away. “Is it?” Then she grinned her horrid, predatorial smile: too many teeth, and all too white. “I find it full of good portents, myself.”

I pulled my straw cone hat down over my eyes, lay back with my sword at my side, and began to doze.