Page 19 of The Tainted Cup

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 wordsSen 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 usdo.

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 theEmpire, 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 EXHAUSTEDby 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 forme.

“Stay right where you are, boy!” Thalamis bellowed. “Do not eventhinkof 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 didIreceive multiple formal complaints,” he said, “from some esteemed personages, Kol, indicating that you did not manage it atall? Because it sounds like you, as you so often do, fucked it upbeyond 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 anapprenticeto 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 menow!”

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.