Page 103 of The Tainted Cup

I gritted my teeth and turned my face to Fayazi Haza. “Y-you l-l-lied to m-me,” I said, forcing the words through my clenched mouth.

A furrow in Fayazi’s smooth brow. “What?”

“S-Signum M-M-Misik Jilki,” I said. “She was h-here. Sm-melled like…like this. I know. Oranje-leaf and s-spice. After she’d been t-touched by the same oils and p-perfume as your…your court dancers here.” I grinned madly. “She f-felt their skin. Knew their flesh. Maybe in…in this same r-room. Didn’t she? Her along w-with…all the others.”

The axiom retreated to the walls, dark eyes watching warily like I’d drawn steel.

“What are you talking about?” spat Fayazi.

“D-did they smell j-just like Commander Blas?” I leaned forward. “For he had a taste f-for the aroma, too, didn’t he? He c-came tolikeit. That’s wh-why he had a…p-pot of his own.”

Fayazi stared at me, stunned.

“You lied to m-me,” I whispered. “They c-came here. Frolicked with y-your court dancers. And th-then they were y-yours. But…b-but wh-what didyouget from them, ma’am? What didyouget from all those d-dead Engineers?”

Fayazi looked to her Sublimes. When they said nothing, she flicked a hand at her court dancer, who withdrew to the shadows of the room. Then she snapped: “Get him out of here. Get him out of here and get himgone!”

Then I was ripped backward out of my seat.

—

MY HEAD SPUNas the two guards marched me through the darkness of the landscape outside. I had never been handled by a person altered for strength, but the second the guards touched me I was like a small child struggling against a parent, my limbs pinned back and my flailing quickly and effortlessly contained. My elbow screamed in pain as one of them bent my arm too far. I cried out, telling them to release me, but they ignoredit.

Finally we came to the landing under the claw of the leviathan, and the guards released me. “Down!” one snarled at me. “Down the stairs and into the carriage, damn you!”

I shambled down the steps and crawled into the back of a waiting carriage. The guard slammed it behind me and said to the driver, “Dump him off at the gates, but don’t take him any farther.” Then the carriage started forward, and we were off.

I peered back at the halls of the Hazas as we took off down the estate road, my head still spinning. Yet I saw someone had come to the top of the steps, and now stood below the massive leviathan’s claw: a silvery figure, white and ghostly, looking down onme.

I locked eyes with Fayazi Haza. She seemed utterly transformed in that moment, her eyes wide and terrified and desperate in the dark, like she was a prisoner I was abandoning in her cell. Then her Sublimes ran to her, and her axiom took her by the arm once more, pulling her back, and she was lost in the darkness.

The gates of the Hazas opened, the carriage slid to a stop, and then the door fell open. “Out!” barked the driver.

I did as he bade, but as I stepped down I saw there was a small crowd of people waiting for me: Legionnaires, two of them clutching mai-lanterns; and there, at their front, stood Captain Miljin.

“Easy, boy,” he said. He took me by the shoulder. “Are you all right? Are you whole?”

CHAPTER 30

| | |

ANA AND MILJIN LISTENEDgrimly in her chambers as I recounted what I’d seen in the halls of the Hazas. I sniffed at my vial of mint aroma and went through every detail, sparing nothing, reciting all I’d seen from the moment I’d stepped into their carriage—except for my fumbling attempt to review the Hazas’ correspondence in their rookery. That I would leave for last.

When I finished we sat in silence in the arbitration chambers of the Iudex tower. The only sound was the creak and sigh as the building flexed about us in the night breeze.

“You did well, boy,” said Ana quietly. “Well to look and see as you did…And well to resist Fayazi’s temptations.” She shook her head, disgusted. “What a tool cynicism is to the corrupt, claiming the whole of the creation is broken and fraudulent, and thus we are all excused to indulge in whatever sins we wish—for what’s a little more unfairness, in this unfair world? Wise you were, Din, to shut your ears to it.” She went still for a moment, then said, “Now. Repeat Fayazi Haza’s first set of questions for me, please.”

I took a breath, then echoed:“Have you found something? Has Dolabra found something? Anything?”

“I see…And the second set of questions?”

Again, I echoed:“What does your immunis know of my father? What has he done? What does she know about him and Taqtasa Blas?”

“Yes…and that moment, before you went to see the walls—sheoffered you food, but you did not take it,” said Ana. “Correct? And then she…”

I nodded. “She looked terrified. Frightened of something, like she’d done something wrong. But I didn’t know what, ma’am. Yet she looked the same when I saw her last, when she came to stand at the top of the stairs.”

Ana was silent again for a long, long time. Then she said simply, “And the bit you overheard her saying, Din? To her mysterious visitor, before she tried to tempt you?”