Page 60 of The Tainted Cup

She stood.

“Deep what now?” I asked.

“It’s been awhile since I was driven to such means,” she grumbled. She walked to one of her enormous trunks full of books, stooped, and began dumping them out by the armload. “But if any situation calls for it, it’s this one.” She did a double take, glaring at me. “Don’t just watch me toil here, boy. Help me!”

I did so, scooping out the books until the trunk was empty. It was one of Ana’s few personal possessions, a massive, battered old thing she’d insisted on bringing with her; though now that it was empty, I saw that the interior bottom was not made of wood, but appeared to be cushioned, almost like a bed for some animal.

“Shan’t be a moment,” said Ana. She slipped on her blindfold. “I just need to meditate on this for a bit before deciding the course of action. The solitude helps me ponder.” She climbed into the massive trunk and sat down. “You can wait here. Just don’t touch too much of my damned stuff. Iwillknow what’s been moved!”

“But, ma’am,” I said. “What are you goingt—”

She snapped the trunk door shut on herself. I stared at it, bewildered. Then came a softthumpfrom within, as if she was making herself comfortable, and all fell to silence.

I looked around, unsure what to do. The silence stretchedon.

My eye fell on the sack of talints at my feet, and I reflected that now I really could just walk away with them, if I liked. Yet I decided that the odds of a solitary young criminal with a huge fortune on his person making it through a highly patrolled road that was often pestered with murderous deserters would either be slim to none or none at all. So instead of committing robbery, I made tea.

I opened Ana’s window and sat beside it, sipping my tea and drinking in the nightscape of Talagray again. After all I’d discovered today, being in the city felt hardly safer than any of my idle fantasies of theft and escape. This place was meant to be the keystone of all the Empire; and yet, in one day, I’d found it rotten to the core.

Then, with asnap,Ana’s trunk popped open, and she sat up like acursed soul from the grave. She paused as she felt the slight breeze in the room. “Shut that damned window!” she barked. “What are you trying to do to me, child? I’m attempting tothink!”

I fumbled to do so, spilling tea on my Iudex coat, then slammed the shutters closed like there was a torrential rain outside, rather than a peaceful evening. “Apologies, ma’am. Didn’t meant—”

“One needs isolation for the mind to focus,” she snapped at me. “If you want to get no work done, get an office with a beautiful view. But if you want to parse all your problems, yo—fuck.” She slipped on one of her piles of papers as she stepped out, and barely caught herself on the side of the trunk. She then finished climbing out and grumbled for a moment. “Well. Did you make tea, Din?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Then I’ll have a cup.”

She sat down on the bed as I poured her one.

“First…I have a question.” She fixed me in a fearsome glare. “I want answers about somethingyoudid.”

“Ah. Y-yes, ma’am? Did I do something wrong?”

“Yes! Very wrong! Why thehelldidn’t you tell me you knew how to pick locks?”

“Oh,” I said sheepishly. “Well. I don’t really know how, ma’am. I just memorized the movements to unlock three basic types of locks.”

She stared at me, outraged. “That…that is basically the goddamn definition of ‘knows how to pick locks,’ boy! What an absurd thing! What the hell else do you know how to do?”

I handed her the cup. “I do seem to be developing a talent for tolerating verbal abuse and mad questions, ma’am.”

She glared at me again. “I wish to know more of your lockpicking, Din…But for now, let’s start dissecting all this, beginning with this Captain Kiz Jolgalgan. For she is of great interest to me.”

“Since she might be our only witness for the poisoning?” I asked.

A long slurp of tea. “No. Because I rather like her for being our murderer.”

I stared at her as she dabbed her lips on her cloak.

“Beg pardon?” I asked.

“I mean, who’s more experienced than anyone with contagions?” Ana mused. “Apoths. And now you’re telling me an Apoth was going to all these secret meetings with the Engineers? And is now possibly thelonesurvivor?”

“You…you really think this Jolgalgan might be our poisoner, ma’am?”

“Possibly!” said Ana. “I don’t have all the answers yet, of course. Dunno why she’d want to kill all her friends, or why she chose the maddest fucking method ever to do it. Or, indeed, if she also intended to bring down the sea wall and imperil the whole of the goddamn Empire, too! But…it hangs! Though it is but a scrap of information, it hangs together, a bit. Captain Miljin has surely notified the Legion to keep an eye out for this Jolgalgan by now. But please get ahold of Nusis tomorrow, Din, and see what the Apoths can dig up on her. They must have files on the woman’s alterations. I want to know what Jolgalgan can do, where she’s been, what capacities she’s served in, and anyone and everyone who might have served alongside her. Let us see if my hunch is right.”