Page 65 of The Tainted Cup

I stopped short at the sight of him. It took me a moment to recall he was meant to be helping Ana find information on all the fernpaper millers in Talagray.

I looked about for Ana but couldn’t find her. Then the overpowering scent of fish struck my nostrils, and I heard her voice: “Din! What good timing. Strovi here has just brought me all those fernpaper orders I’d requested.”

I looked down. Ana was lying on the floor on her back at Strovi’s feet, half-concealed in a pile of parchments, blindfolded as usual. To her left was a tray containing the remains of a fish, salted and piled with herbs, the flesh so pink it must have never known flame.

“Why are you…” I said.

“On the floor?” she said. “I can feel the movements of this tower better from here, Din, reading the wind and the weather with my back.” She grinned. “It’s marvelous. You ought to try it sometime.”

Strovi was watching me with a half smile on his face, amused by the madness of it all. He was not nearly as disheveled as he’d looked that night when he and Vashta had come to Daretana: now he was clean-shaven, his mop of curly dark hair was elegantly clipped back, and his black cloak was pressed and his boots polished. Between his size and his vitality he seemed to take up the whole of the room, even sprawled in a chair with Ana on the floor beside him.

There was a ceramic cup in his lap and a pot of tea on the table beside him. I took off my straw cone hat, bowed to him, and entered. Then I glanced into the teapot—half empty—and laid a finger against its side. It was cool to the touch.

“He’sjustbrought you your orders, ma’am?” I asked. “From the shape of things, he’s been here awhile. You’ve been interrogating him, haven’t you.”

“It, ah…” Strovi cleared his throat. “It has been an hour or so, ma’am. Possibly two. Or, ah, three.”

Ana waved a hand, indifferent. “Possibly. It’s not very often that Iget to parley with a Talagray Legion officer.”

“So long as he’s here with consent,” I said. “And you’re being civil, ma’am.”

“I’m as civil as a magistrate,” she said. “Why, I haven’t asked the young captain here about the aroma of his piss once.”

Strovi’s bemused smile flickered out like a candle flame.

“I just passed Captain Miljin on the way in, ma’am,” I said pointedly. “He mentioned some discovery that had been made…”

She waved a hand. “And I have little update to give you on it. We shall discuss it later.”

I narrowed my eyes. Little update? Did she now think our colleagues above suspicion?

“Strovi here was telling me, Din,” said Ana languidly, “that the Legion is digging through the old history books for how to get us out of this damned spot. Nearly sixty years ago the Empire suffered a terrible breach, and the only way they plugged it up was by waiting for asecondleviathan to approach and slaughtering it directly at the breach point, turning its carcass into an impassible obstacle, and plugging the hole! Isn’t thatmarvelous?”

“As marvelous as a massive carcass could be, I suppose, ma’am,” I said.

“They’ll do it a little differently this time about,” she said. Her fingers dug in the flesh of the fish, plucked out a thread of pink tissue, and dropped it in her open mouth. “Rather than using thousands of damn soldiers firing hundreds of ballistas, they’re putting together some kind of bombard that can—theoretically—drop a leviathan in one shot. A titan-killer.”

“I believe Nusis mentioned something about that to me,” I said. I looked to Strovi. “Apparently the bombard requires extensive grafts?”

“For the explosive powder,” explained Strovi. “It’s a new variant. It has to be much more powerful to punch through one of the beasts. But as much as I enjoy answering all your, ah,extensivequestions about bombards, ma’am, that’s not what Commander-Prificto Vashta has assigned me to do here. Rather, I’m to help with yourinvestigation in any way I can.”

“Fascinating.” Still lying flat on the floor, Ana snatched up a morsel of fish flesh and held it out to me. “Would you care for a bite of tartun, Din? Strovi said no, but it was just caught today.”

I eyed the stringy clump of pink meat hanging from her fingers. “Afraid I have to refrain, ma’am.”

“Suit yourself,” said Ana. She popped it in her mouth. “What else did Nusis have to say, Din? Something useful about this Jolgalgan?”

“I would sayveryuseful, ma’am,” I said quietly. I placed Jolgalgan’s papers in Ana’s lap. Ana sat up and began pawing through them, apparently indifferent to the streaks of fish fat she left on the parchments.

“Start talking, child,” Ana said sharply. “Now.”

I recounted my conversation with Nusis exactly. Captain Strovi’s eyes grew wider the more I spoke, and Ana pawed ever faster at the parchments in her lap.

There was a beat of silence as I finished.

Then the captain exclaimed, “You have it, then! You’ve found her, yes? This Jolgalgan surely is our culprit! What amazing work!”

I nodded to him stiffly. I’d never gotten such a compliment from a senior officer of another Iyalet before, especially not the Legion, and did not quite know how to handleit.