Page 47 of The Tainted Cup

“Why?”

Again, I ignored her question. “Would you have seen her the day before her death?”

Topirak shook her head.

“No?”

“No, sir. She was at the walls,” she murmured. “Stayed there overnight, sir.”

“She was there all day?” I asked.

“Yes, sir. And the two days before that.”

“And she went nowhere besides the walls?”

“Not as far as I’m aware, sir.”

“Nowhere with steam, or water, or the like?”

“Don’t…don’t quite know what you’re asking, sir. Has something gone wrong?”

I considered what to say. One of the snails trailed across her severed wrist, leaving a stripe of pink flesh behind.

“When was the last time you saw Jilki, Princeps?” I asked.

“I saw her four days before she died, I think, sir?”

“And what were her movements on that day?”

“She went to the walls in the morning, and came back, sir.”

“And the day before that?” I asked.

“The same.”

I narrowed my eyes as I put this together. “So…just to make sure. For the six days previous to her death, the only places she went were here, at these quarters, and to the walls?”

“Yes, sir.”

I did not like the feel of this. I knew from Uhad’s report that two of the ten dead Engineers had been stationed in Talagray and had not visited either the walls or the Forward Engineering Quarters. Hearing that Jilki hadonlyvisited these places before her death would mean there was no commonality among the ten, which would make determining where they’d all been poisoned much harder.

“You’re asking about contagion,” said Topirak. “Aren’t you, sir?”

“What makes you say that?” I asked, perhaps too sharply.

“I’m a medikker, sir. I know the questions. Want to figure out where they’ve been, what they touched, where they got it. Is that the case, sir?”

“Somewhat.”

“I thought Misik had died in the collapse. When the walls fell. Why…why ask about contagion? And why’s the Iudex investigating a contagion, and not the Apoths?”

“We’re just trying to understand more. Is there anything you can think of along those lines, Princeps?”

“N-no,” she said. “When Misik wasn’t at her duties, she was with me.” The weak smile again. “That’s as I liked it.”

She looked to me for sympathy. But I could feel something amiss now, and didn’t give her any.

Adripas Topirak shifted in her bath. Her eyes searched theceiling, anxious and fretful. She opened her mouth to speak, then stopped. I waited for it to come.