Page 46 of The Tainted Cup

“Hurt in the collapse, sir,” the attendant said. “Rather serious. She’s recuperating down the hall, last room on the right.”

I went to the room and knocked on the closed door. No answer. I turned the knob, walked in—and stopped short.

I’d never been in a true medikkers’ bay before. As such, I was unprepared for what I found.

A single mai-lantern glimmered over a large, metal bathing cauldron situated in the center of the dark fretvine room. The cauldron was filled with a curious, whitish fluid that smelled strongly of old milk. Lying in the fluid was a tall Kurmini woman, her head resting back on the lip of the cauldron, her eyes shut, face pale and sweating. Though I couldn’t see far into the milky substance in the tub, she was surely naked beneathit.

This was startling enough, but more startling still was the contraption of rope and wires hanging overhead, which suspended her right arm above the waters—yet her arm lacked a hand. In its place was a pale pink stump, and clinging to the stump like barnacles on the hull of a ship were dozens of tiny black snails, greedily sucking away at her open wound.

I stared at the snails, horrified. Then I felt a fluttering in the backs of my eyes, and I remembered something my old dueling teacher Trof had once said in jest:And if any of you lose an arm or an ear by accident, don’t fret, children—the medikkers will slap sangri-snails on the wound until they can grow you a new one.

Well, I thought. I guess that’s what those look like, then. Another memory I’d never be able to get out of my head. I reminded myself to stay controlled and contained.

I opened my engraver’s pack, slid out a vial, and smelled it. This one was redolent of smoke and ash. I grimaced, walked to the foot of the tub, and cleared my throat.

Topirak didn’t move.

“Princeps?” I said.

Her brow creased ever so faintly. A clean face, handsome and even. Bruises all on one side, now turned the color of old tea. Her skin was gray, much like mine, but her nose was clearly the focus of her alterations: it was purpled and slightly larger than normal, withmany veins behind the nostrils. A common grafting in the Apoths, I knew: the ability to smell a concoction or a wound and identify its state was critical in their Iyalet.

“Princeps?” I said, louder.

With a snort and a moan, Topirak awoke. “Wh…wha?” She opened her swollen eyes. Their whites were utterly bloodshot. When she saw me, her eyes went even wider and she cried out in alarm, shouting, “Who the hell are you?”

“Ahh,” I said, bewildered. I looked behind myself, wondering if someone was standing behind me. “I…I’m Signum Dinios Kol of the Iudex, Princeps. What’s wrong?”

She stared at me for a moment, then sighed in relief. “Oh, thank Sanctum…Do you know, when I saw you standing there over me, all dressed in darks and glowering down at me…” She laughed wearily. “I thought you were Death himself come for me, sir.”

I paused, wondering what to say. I’d been called all kinds of names during my short career with the Iyalets, but no one had ever mistaken me for the Harvester.

“It’s the bath, sir,” she explained. “There’s stuff in these waters that does stuff to your head.” She sniffed it. “Murgrass, mostly. A type of algae. Its feces offers many healing properties. That’s what makes the water white, you see…” She sniffed it again. “Also ceterophins, a sleeping reagent…And altias oils. For constipation. Don’t want me shitting in here.”

“Impressive skill,” I said.

She smiled weakly. “Blessed Atir of the Khanum, they say, had altered herself so she could awake and sniff the air, and know the placement of every bird and beast and flower about her for a mile…Though I doubt if she ever wound up in a bath like this. I sleep so much…I don’t even know what day it is anymore.”

“It’s the eighteenth of the month of Kyuz,” I said, “and I’m not from the deadlands, but the Iudex. I’m hoping you can help me with a few questions about the breach.”

“Why’s the Iudex investigating a breach, sir?” she croaked.

I ignored the question, took a chair from the corner, and sat down beside her. “I need to ask you about Signum Misik Jilki,” I said.

A shadow of sorrow crossed her face. “M-Misik’s dead, sir,” she whispered.

“I know that, Princeps. Did you know her well?”

She shifted in the milky fluid, her expression pained. The white tide sloshed about her torso, revealing a luminous curve of a breast, blackened with storm clouds of bruises. “Yes.”

“Very well?”

She glared at me. She was waking up now. “We were lovers, sir. But that’s not against policy, being as we’re from different Iyalets, is it?”

“I see,” I said. I was learning to stop being surprised when Ana’s hunches turned out to be right. “How long were you involved with her?”

A slow, sluggish blink as she did the math. “God…three years now.”

“I’m sorry for your loss, and…” I resisted the urge to look down at her missing hand. “…and for what happened to you. I’m trying to learn a little more about how Jilki died.”