Page 11 of The Tainted Cup

I peered through the valleys of tomes and approached the meeting room at the back of the little house. I could already see the feet of someone sitting in a chair back there—officer’s boots, black and shiny—and grimaced. I smoothed back my hair and walked into the meeting room.

The meeting room had gotten worse since yesterday: it was nowbrimming with tangles of potted plants, many exotic and half-dead, and stringed musical instruments in varying states of disrepair. On the left side of the room sat a small stuffed chair, and today a captain from Engineering occupied it, a thin, middle-aged man who looked absolutely terrified.

The reason for his terror was obvious, for most people found themselves terrified to share a room with my master: Immunis Anagosa Dolabra, Iudex Investigator of the Daretana Canton, who was sitting on the floor facing away from the captain as she worked on yet another one of her projects. It appeared to be some contraption of wires and string I could make no sense of. I guessed she’d taken apart one of her many situr harps—she was an avid if inattentive musician—and was making some kind of loom from its strings.

“I told you, Din,” Ana said, “toknock.Always.”

I stood up straight at attention, hands behind my back, heels shoulder-width apart, knees straight. “Thought I heard voices, ma’am,” I said. “Came to check.”

“Oh, there’s nothing to be worried about.” She looked over her shoulder at me, grinning. A strand of her snowy-white hair arched down over her cheek, like the crest feather of some exotic bird. I maintained my stance, but she could not see me, for she was wearing a wide strip of crimson cloth as a blindfold. “The captain and I,” she said, “have been having the mostdelightfulconversation.”

The captain stared at me in naked dread.

“Have you, ma’am,” I said.

“Oh, yes,” she said. She turned back to her project. “The captain here is in charge of maintaining the irrigation networks about Daretana. During their works they discovered ruins, hundreds of years old, built by some of the folk who lived here before the Empire came. Isn’t that right, Captain Tischte?”

The captain looked at me and mouthed—Helpme!

“Most curiously,” Ana continued, “apparently some of the ruins were built using a complex herringbone brick structure, requiring less mortar in their application! Isn’t thatfascinating?”

The captain was now gesturing desperately at me and pointing at the door.

“Very fascinating, ma’am,” I said.

“Especially because,” she said, “I have long nursed a theory that many of the Kurmini folk in the third ring of the Empire originally migrated from these lands before the Empire was established. And this would offer some confirmation of that, as the herringbone brick pattern isextremelycommon in the Kurmin canton! The people migrated inward, obviously, because…” She waved her hand easterly. “I mean, if you wanted to survive, that was what you did.”

The captain paused in his gesturing, having noticed a white cloth on a tray beside him. Before I could stop him, he lifted it and stared in horror at the sight underneath: a little jipti sparrow that Ana had caught some weeks ago, then killed, dissected, and preserved in a glass jar. The captain dropped the cloth, his hand trembling.

I rushed to think up a story. “Actually, ma’am,” I said, clearing my throat, “I happened to run into some officers from Engineering on the way here.”

“Did you?”

“Yes, ma’am. They mentioned they needed Captain Tischte right away.”

Ana paused before her contraption, then cocked her head. “Hm.No.That is a lie, Din. You’re a very bad liar, and I can hear it in your voice. But! I will admit, besides the herringbone discussion, Captain Tischte hasn’t really had anything interesting to say, and I’m getting rather bored of him.” She turned to him, still blindfolded, still grinning. “You can go, Captain. I do appreciate your time.”

Captain Tischte shot to his feet, looking scandalized. He bowed, uttered a single hoarse “M-madam,” and then made for the door.

I accompanied him out into the steamy afternoon, wondering how to undo the damage this time.

“I apologize for that, sir,” I said. “There’s no excuse fo—”

“Apologize!” he squawked once we were outside. “Apologize!She sends me a letter to come round with some maps, and when I oblige,she traps me there forthree hoursinterrogating me about the whole of my life! She even asked me about the shape of myfeet!”

“I’m sorry,” I said. I bowed, glanced up, saw his furious face, then bowed deeper, until my nose nearly touched my ratty boots. “I would have stopped it if I’d been here, sir, I really would ha—”

“And then…then she has the temerity to call meboring!” he said. “To think that that madwoman is our Iudex Investigator, I just…” He turned and stormed off along the jungle path, back to town.

I watched him go, muttered, “Shit,” and reentered the house.

Ana was still coiled before her contraption in the meeting room, posture taut, fingers thoughtfully dancing over the strings.

I said, “You do know…” then paused to rethink my words.

“Go on, Din,” she said. She tugged off her blindfold. “I almost thought you were about to rebuke me. That would be splendidly entertaining.”

“Well, you do know, ma’am,” I said, “that…that you really can’t keep doing that.”