Page 9 of The Tainted Cup

“Aboy,” she said. Her words were as dry and taut as a bowstring. “They’ve sent aboy.”

“I beg your pardon?”

She studied me again out of the corner of her eye. “This is who’s trapped us in our house, the house of my masters, and won’t let us remove that damned corpse—a great, overgrownboy.”

A long, icy moment slippedby.

“Someone’s died in your house, ma’am,” I said. “Potentially of contagion. Something that might have killed you all, too. Don’t you want us to investigate?”

“Then where’s the investigator?”

“The investigator isn’t able to attend,” I said. “I’m here to review the scene and report back to her.”

Her gaze lingered on me. I was reminded of an eel contemplating a fish flitting before its cave. “Ask me your questions,” she said. “I’ve work to do, a damned ceiling to patch up. Go.”

I inhaled at my vial and then asked her about the nature of Blas’s stay. She gave what might have been the smallest, least sincere shrug I’d ever seen. “He is a friend of the Haza family.”

“One of your servant girls said the same thing,” I said.

“Because it’s true.”

“Theexactsame thing.”

“Because it’s true.”

“And your masters often let their friends stay at their houses?”

“My masters have many houses, and many friends. Sometimes their friends come to stay with us.”

“And no one from the Haza clan intended to join him?”

“My masters,” she said, “prefer more civilized environs than this canton.”

I moved on, asking her about the locations of the staff’s reagents keys.

“All the reagents keys are locked up at night,” she said. “Only I and Uxos are in constant possession of any during the evening, for emergencies.”

I asked about replacing keys, how to duplicate them, and so on, but she was dismissive. The idea was impossible to her.

“What about alterations?” I said. “Have your staff had any imperial grafts applied?”

“Of course,” she said. “For immunities, and parasites. Weareon the rim of the Empire, after all.”

“Nothing more advanced than that?”

She shook her head. I felt a heat under the collar of my coat. I didn’t like how little she moved, sitting up so ramrod straight,shifting her head only to look at me out of the side of her eye like a damned bird.

“Can you at least tell me the nature of the commander’s relationship with the Hazas?” I asked.

A withering stare. “They werefriends.”

“How long have they been friends?”

“I do not know the nature of all my masters’ friendships, nor is that for me to know.”

“Do they have many friends in Daretana?”

“Yes. In many of the Iyalets, at that.” Her eyes glittered at me. “And some of them are above you.”