Page 73 of The Tainted Cup

I searched the side rooms. An old cot and blanket. A rickety stove brimming with ashes. Tools for shaving and the mending of clothes. Suberek, it seemed, had lived alone.

I looked back at the darkened hallway.

The whine of flies. The pounding stink of rot.

I picked up Strovi’s lantern, took a deep breath, and walked down the hallway.

The hall narrowed off rapidly, leading to a small hatch, with a ladder leading down. Yet as I approached the ladder, I saw the air was moving.

No, not moving: shimmering and shivering. It was boiling with blackflies, all pouring out of the hatch with the ladder.

I braced myself, looped the lantern over one hand, and descended into the darkness.

The stench of decay grew so awful it made my eyes weep. The world swirled with insects, all furious at my passage. Yet as I reached the bottom of the basement I held the lantern up and looked.

It was a small space for the storage of tools and materials. Scraps of fernpaper to be reprocessed. Wood frames and pieces of presses. And there, at the far end of the basement, a human figure, seated and facing away fromme.

I stared at the figure, obscured by a thick veil of flies. Then I steeled myself and walked forward, and the black veil reluctantly parted.

It was a man’s body, broad shouldered and thick and roughly dressed. His shoulders and back were black with old blood, though I could see no wound—not yet. I found it all very familiar.

I knelt down and held the lantern up to the corpse’s head.

There, at the base of the skull, was a tiny, dark hole. Just like the one I’d found on Aristan’s corpse.

I looked at the man’s face, engraving what I saw: large nose, broken repeatedly in the past; scanty beard; thick eyebrows; one false tooth the color of pewter. Yonas Suberek, I guessed, our missing miller. I could find nothing more to learn from his body.

I studied the rest of the basement, digging through the junk and the refuse in search of anything else of interest. I found nothing.

A hoarse, harsh voice from above—Miljin’s. “Kol!” he bellowed. “You down there, boy?”

“Yes, sir!” I said, poppingup.

His gray-maned face appeared in the ladder hatch. “Damn. There’s no way I could fit down here…” He blinked, waved flies fromhis face, then narrowed his eyes. “And you’re down there with a dead fella, by the stink of it.”

“Yes, sir,” I said. “This Suberek, I think. Man who owned the mill. He’s dead.”

“How?”

“Hole in his head, sir. Like someone drilled it.”

His eyes narrowed. “Hole in his head…Sanctum. That’s just like the other.”

I nodded, attempting to look solemn. “Aristan, yes. Ana told me about her.”

He squinted at me. “Strovi tells me you’re the one who put those bodies in the mud out there. That so?”

“Two should be the captain’s, sir. The others are…mine, I suppose, yes.”

His face went strangely shuttered. “Interesting…And he said you just remembered. Is that it?”

“Remembered my training. Yes, sir.”

“Interesting,” he said again. “Hmph. Then let’s get you out of there. Whole crew’s arriving now. They’ll be hollering for answers soon, no doubt.”

CHAPTER 22

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