Page 29 of The Tainted Cup

“Smells wonderful,” said Ana. She sipped at her cup. “Tastes wonderful.”

I bowed my thanks, still unable to speak.

“And I note,” said Ana, “that you always make it theexactsame way. Same twist of the pestle. Same pinches of the leaves. Exactly the same, every time.”

“A friend showed me how,” I said numbly.

We sat in the blue half light, clutching our cups and listening to the rain and the sound of the tocsin bells in the distance.

“Did you have any friends going out tonight?” she asked.

“A few. In Engineering. Haven’t seen much of them recently, since they got their assignments a while ago and I didn’t, but…” I trailed off, not knowing what to say. “I didn’t see them. Didn’t get to say goodbye.”

“If they’re Engineering, they should be safer,” said Ana. “Notsafe,of course, but safer. They don’t send the Engineers in until the leviathan itself is dealt with. Then the Engineers take stock of the situation and patch up the fortifications as fast as they can. For that’s when things get trickier. They’ll relocate the bombards to defend the breach point, but…naturally, that makes every other part of the walls harder to defend.”

“So my friends won’t be in danger now,” I said, “but later?”

“Correct, and incorrect,” said Ana. “A breach is a terrible thing, Din. We’re all in danger now, for the rest of the wet season.”

“And what are we to do about that, ma’am?”

She shrugged. “Wait. And see.”

—

I STAYED UPall night with Ana, listening to the chiming of her contraption and her constant babble as she shot around the room, opening up books and massaging their pages with her head at an angle, sometimes reading aloud or voicing some bizarre fact or theory of hers.

“They use seakips in the third ring to pull barges through their canals,” she said once, “little swollen dolphin creatures with doglike faces, but apparently there’s been some sort of suffusion issue. The Apothetikals bred a new kind of oyster that can grow to great sizes, but the oyster hosts a germ that gets into the water, and this germ makes the seakipsprofoundlyaroused, all the time. Apparently they rut themselves to death.”

“Is that so, ma’am,” I said, exhausted.

“Yes. Many bargemen have taken to castrating their seakips—but this is pretty tricky, Din, as the appropriate anatomy is not terribly accessible. Or identifiable. It takes a trained eye and a steady hand—in case you’re ever looking for a new job.”

I half smiled at such a gruesome idea. I knew she was trying to keep me distracted from all the horror and the worry, and I appreciated her forit.

Time stretched on. I was about to doze off where I sat—and then I sat up, eyes wide.

“It’s…gone,” I said. “Your chimes. It’s quiet.”

“Yes,” said Ana. She knelt before her contraption, which was now silent. The crackle of bombards in the distance had tapered off as well. “It seems it is.”

“Do you think they’ve really killed it, ma’am?”

“Probably. Hopefully. It’s early morning now. We’ll know in a day or so if it’s really dead.”

—

I RAN BACKto Daretana and found a crowd of fellow soldiers and Sublimes waiting outside of Stephinos’s post station. Stephinos madea show of sitting out front on the ground, and when asked he’d only say, “I’d damned well tell you all if I knew something worth telling.”

We waited for hours in the muggy air, milling about uselessly. We watched as scribe-hawks sailed overhead—homing birds the Apoths had designed to carry messages long distances—but none came to us, probably because we were already so close to Talagray. No one gave us any duties, nor shouted at us for our aimless loitering. Everyone knew the whole day would change when word arrived.

Then, close to evening, it came: two riders, both in Legion black, mounted atop league-horses—the giant steeds altered to cross huge amounts of land in mere hours. The first rider, a woman, stopped at Stephinos’s station; the other, a man, kept going, probably to carry word to the towns beyond.

Everyone hurried to water the messenger’s horse and bring her whatever she needed, but all she asked for was a box to stand on. She clambered aboard it and addressed the crowd, shouting, “The leviathan has been felled.”

So stern was her face, though, that no one cheered.

“It was felled to the south,” she continued. “Just east of the town of Sapfir. It has created a gap in the walls just over a league wide.”