Page 52 of The Tainted Cup

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STILL TREMBLING ANDquaking, Vartas gave us the full spill of it. I sniffed at my ash-scent vial and listened.

“I…I don’t know what it was about,” he said, sniffing. “I don’t know why Gink went to Talagray. But I knew it had something to do with her career. With her prospects.”

Miljin stood huffing over me like an angry boar. I tried to focus on Vartas’s words.

“How do you know this?” I asked.

“Because after she started going, everything started going right for her,” he said. “Plum projects. Faster promotions. Greater pay.Fargreater pay, really, working under Commander Blas.”

Every muscle in my body went tight. “Commander Blas? She worked with him?”

He nodded.

“What did she do for him?”

“Engineering stuff, I suppose. Diagrams and bridges and such. I just knew she went to Talagray every few months, and the money came in. And I was told to not ask questions, and keep my mouth shut. Which I did. Not like she ever thanked me, though.”

I took in his fine robes, his tea tray, the aroma of his pipe. Suddenly his living situation didn’t seem quite so remarkable.

“How many times did she go to the city for these meetings?” I asked.

“I don’t know. Ten times. Maybe more.”

This was noteworthy. Signum Loveh, it seemed, was a much more regular visitor than all of the other dead Engineers I’d asked about.

“I asked to be let in on the secret,” Vartas said resentfully. “To get to go, too. But she said it wasn’t allowed. Said I had to bechosen.What made you chosen, I didn’t know. I mean, when I looked at the rest of her little gang, I couldn’t see what made them so special.”

Miljin and I glanced at one another, our interest piqued.

“Gang?” I asked. “What gang is this?”

“Dunno if it was agang,precisely,” Vartas muttered. “Just…just pals, perhaps. Friends. But they all seemed to bear some blessing from above.”

“Names,” spat Miljin. “Give us their names, damn you.”

“D-damn it all,” he stammered. “I’m a spatiast, not an engraver! I don’t keep this shit behind my eyes!” He grumbled for a moment. “Gink was friendly with three of them. Might have been more, but she and those three hung together tight.” One finger probed where his pipe had burned him on his side as he thought. “Vanduo. That was one, I think.”

I nodded. Princeps Alaus Vanduo—that was one of the dead.

“And the next…I think the name was Lapa? Lapir?”

“Lapfir?” I suggested.

“I think that was it. Maybe, yes. That was it.”

Princeps Atha Lapfir, then. Another of the dead ten.

“And the last…” Vartas frowned for a moment. “The last was…Jolgalgan.Right. That was her.”

I looked at him blankly. Then I looked at Miljin, who stared blankly back at me. This name was totally new.

“Ah…who?” I asked.

“Jolgalgan,” said Vartas again. He nodded. “That was her. Captain Kiz Jolgalgan. I remember because she was an Apoth, and no one else was.”

My eyes fluttered as I riffled among the many names I’d heard in the past day. Yet Captain Kiz Jolgalgan, I knew, was most certainly not one of the ten dead Engineers.