Page 92 of The Tainted Cup

I walked to the far wall and stooped and studied the lining between the fernpaper panels. The seam was filled with a dark paste—still soft.

“It likely would be dangerous in here still,” I said. I looked over my shoulder at her. “Unless the air had been vented out, taking the spores with it.”

Fayazi was silent at that.

“Were the fernpaper panels in here replaced, ma’am?” I asked.

“No,” she said simply. “Not recently, to my knowledge.”

“Are you sure? This seam is soft and new, and removing any panels would allow the air to circulate.”

“The lady has spoken her mind,” said the axiom sharply. “And she saidno.You know more of this contagion than we do. How should we comprehend its behaviors?”

“There was a fernpaper miller that fulfilled an order,” I said. “His name was Suberek. We have indication that he delivered this fernpaper order here.”

“We have no knowledge of this,” said the axiom.

I ignored her and looked to Fayazi. “It would be a very large order, ma’am. And being as this fernpaper work appears new, it makes me wonder.”

There was another awkward beat. Fayazi glanced at her axiom, then shrugged. “My house and staff are vast,” she said. “I do not know everything that occurs here. Perhaps an order was placed. If so, I do not know where it is now. Do you know all that the Iudex does,or all the Empire, Signum?”

“And you still deny that the ten dead Engineers were ever here at all,” I said.

“We do not invite junior officers to our events,” the axiom said simply. “Unless it is at special request.”

I gazed at the three of them: the gentrywoman, the axiom, and the engraver. Studying their faces was like trying to read emotion in a piece of polished glass. I thought myself contained and controlled, yet these were indisputably masters atit.

“Was the poison delivered here, Signum?” Fayazi asked.

“It was delivered here, yes,” I said. “But the agent of contagion isn’t here. Because the water isn’t heated here, is it?”

“No,” she said. “It is not.”

“Then take me there, please.”

—

I HAD TOclimb a ladder onto the back roof of the halls to access the water tank. It was a huge contraption, bigger than a slothik or a crackler, and its bronzed surface shone like a miniature sun. Fayazi’s coterie watched from below as I aligned my eye with the length of its shootstraw pipe, which ran down to the roof of the bathing house.

“How does the water get up here?” I asked.

“The servants bring it up in buckets,” called Fayazi. “How else? Then they light the stonewood fires beneath and send it down to the baths.”

“And this is what happened after the party, ma’am?”

“Yes. Of course.”

I opened the top of the tank and peered in. It was wide and rounded with a small grate in the center.

And there, lying in the middle of the grate, was a small strip of something dark. Though it was hard to see in the shadows within the tank, I had no doubt what it was.

My eyes fluttered, and suddenly I was not leaning down into a water tank: I was back in Daretana, watching as Princeps Otiriosheld his hands up about eight smallspan apart.

A slender slip of grass…not big at all. Odd to think such a small thing could kill a man so horribly.

I swallowed as the memory released me. “That’s it,” I said hoarsely. “It’s still here.”

—