Page 90 of The Tainted Cup

I did not answer.

“And yet,” she said, “you have a fell hand when it comes to battle. Two men I am told you killed, just hours ago, and grievously wounded others. Perhaps beyond the medikkers’ mending. Yes?”

Again, I did not answer. But I did not like how she knew such things so quickly. I wondered who in the Iyalets had talked.

“Well. You will likely find it all familiar, then.” She gazed out the window as the gentrylands rose around us. “Born into systems beyond our control, into relationships and organizations that obligate us to change, all so our families may prosper…That’s what the Empire is, isn’t it? You wear your colored cloak, and I the vestiges of my station, but we are both compelled to do things we can hardly comprehend.”

“Don’t say such things, ma’am,” whispered her axiom. “It is not as bad as all that.”

Fayazi shuddered, as if the woman’s words disturbed her. Yet then the emotion was swallowed in her face, and she became as cold and beautiful as polished silver once again.

“My father knew what the Empire was,” said Fayazi quietly. “He knew it very well.” Then she sat forward. “We are here.”

CHAPTER 27

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WE EXITED THE CARRIAGEinto the bright midday sun. Tall, pale trees lined the road and the hills, their white branches shivering as if listening to a secret. The grass below them was as dark as sable, and only when the rare blades of warm sunlight pierced the canopies and fell upon the tussocks did I see that the grass was a deep, dark green. The Haza lands stretched to the east and west about me, though this tapestry of bucolic beauty ended at a border of dark ribbon: the enclosure’s tall fretvine walls, penning usin.

I paused as I looked around, struck by the sight. It was the most beautiful place I’d seen in all the Empire. Even the breeze smelled sweeter here. It wasn’t until the guards helped Fayazi exit the carriage, and I caught a glimpse of her bone-white ankle, that I reflected that every blade of grass within this cloistered world might be as altered as its mistress.

“Is it to your liking, Signum?” asked Fayazi.

“It is wonderful, ma’am,” I said, and meant it. “How big are the grounds, if I may ask?”

I looked to her axiom, expecting her prompt calculations; but it was the engraver who answered. “It is twenty-three square leagues,” he said quickly, his eyes shivering in their sockets.

“And yet,” Fayazi said, “this land is worth but a fraction of our farmlands in the inner rings. A strange thing, no?”

We advanced up the main stone stairway, the house hangingbefore us on the hill like a storm cloud. It was tall and rambling, a complex place with ribs of white columns and huge expanses of glimmering stained glass. Balconies at every level. Copper drainpipes winding around the columns like tree snakes. Yet the higher walls were wrought of fernpaper.

My eye lingered on these. I wondered if any had come through Suberek’s mill.

I followed Fayazi’s coterie to the top of the stairs, but there I stopped. A sculpture hung over the front landing before us, huge and long and narrow, suspended by cables from rows of tall posts. Yet as I looked closer at it and took in its gray colorings, I realized it was not a sculpture, but a bone.

A claw. An enormous one.

“Two hundred years old, that is,” Fayazi remarked. “Cut from one of the final leviathans to freely wander the Path. They were smaller in those days.”

I stared at the claw. It was at least three times as long as I was tall. I could not imagine the size of the creature that had once borneit.

“Really,” I said. “Do you know how tall it was?”

There was an awkward beat.

“No,” Fayazi said, bored. “We do not. Now. What shall you wish to see first?”

I studied her. Eyes cold, watchful. Confident.

I thought of Ana’s one command:Get to their rookery, boy, and look about.Yet I sensed that to demand to see the Haza rookery now would raise suspicion.

I told myself—wait. Chip away at her confidence. The opportunity may arise soon enough.

I cleared my throat. “Show me where he died, please.”

—

FAYAZI’S COTERIE LEDme through vast, vaulted hallways, the walls all wrought of fretvine so finely braided a Legion bombard shot might have bounced off them. Fayazi walked ahead through theseyawning spaces like a pale ghost haunting some ruin, and I followed, sniffing my vial all the while. There was little sound besides the clank and rattle of her bodyguard’s armor.