The Tainted Cup (Shadow of the Leviathan, #1)(108)

“Very,” said Kitlan. “This is an improvised laboratory. None of this is to Apoth code. And they were handling a very, very dangerous contagion. There’s a reason why we built walls around Oypat, after all.”

I gazed in at the tower. “How much dappleglass could she have brewed in there?”

Kitlan shrugged. “Lots.”

“Is there any way to know if there’s more out there? Planted among the canton, waiting to bloom?”

“No way to tell here, I’m afraid.”

She returned to the tower. We watched her in silence.

“So—the second we get close to Jolgalgan,” said Miljin quietly, “she goes and fucks up and gets herself and her sole collaborator killed.”

Wind ripped through the barren ruins. The corpse within the tower danced and shivered in the trees.

“That feel right to you?” Miljin asked me.

I said nothing.





CHAPTER 34


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I FINISHED SPEAKING, MY voice hoarse, my eyelids aching from the fluttering. My last few words echoed in the adjudication chamber until they finally faded.

Commander-Prificto Vashta peered down at us from the high bench. “So,” she said slowly. “It’s…done?”

Ana shifted in her seat like she’d sat in something wet. “Partially,” she conceded. “Possibly.”

Vashta frowned. Though her Legion’s cuirass was bright and polished and her cloak dark and clean, the commander-prificto’s face looked more beleaguered than ever, so much so that I found myself worrying about the state of the sea walls.

“Immunis,” said Vashta, “could you kindly clarify what in hell you mean by that?”

“I mean, it is possible that the case is solved,” said Ana. “Or that it is partially solved. Or perhaps it is only possibly partially solved, ma’am.”

There was a long silence. I stared down at my new boots, which were now no longer identifiably new, being so caked with mud and stained from the Plains. Miljin, sitting beside me, suppressed a yawn. I sympathized: though this moment felt fraught, we were both exhausted from our ride back and our many debriefings with Ana and Vashta.

“To review, Dolabra,” Vashta said, “Jolgalgan was who you always believed to be the primary poisoner.”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Ana.

“And she is now dead.”

“True, ma’am.”

“And the laboratory where she’d been brewing this horrid contagion is now destroyed.”

“Burned with phalm oil, ma’am, whose heat even dappleglass spores cannot resist.”

“And her collaborator is dead as well—killed by the same accident?”

“Yes,” said Ana. “But there is still little we actually know about her. Did Jolgalgan truly wish to kill those ten Engineers? If so, we know neither how she accomplished this, nor why. We have great reason to believe she killed Kaygi Haza—but we’ve no true idea why there, either. For if this is indeed part of her desire to avenge Oypat, why pursue this one ancient gentryman?”

“The Hazas are one of the greatest clans of the Empire,” said Vashta. “They provide incalculable reagents that maintain our very civilization. Surely killing a prime son of the clan would have many ill effects.”

“Perhaps it is so simple. But if so, ma’am, why would the Hazas hide his murder? Why deny the presence of the ten Engineers at their halls? Why deny all knowledge about Commander Blas? We do not know. And then there is Rona Aristan, and Suberek, the secretary and the miller. They are both dead—and not by Jolgalgan.”

“What are you suggesting?”

“That they were killed by someone else. And judging by the nature of their deaths—a tiny puncture to the skull for both of them—it was someone very augmented, ma’am.”

Vashta stewed for a moment. “Do you have a suspect?”

“Nothing firm, ma’am.”

“Do you have a motive for their killings?”

“Not a clear one, ma’am—not yet. But all we’ve learned continues to point toward the Hazas.”

“And yet, you have surely heard all I’ve said already about the Hazas. Though I am seneschal, if you wish me to haul the owners of the most valuable land in the Empire into this tower like a pack of jackals, I cannot do it during the wet season, when a leviathan grows so near—and especially not after a breach.”

There was a tense silence. Ana’s fist was clenched, her knuckles white and trembling—just like the day she’d interviewed Fayazi Haza in this very chamber.

“I am here to protect the Empire, Immunis,” said Vashta quietly. “Not deliver justice. That is not the purview of my Iyalet, and justice is not always easy to come by in such times.”

“I see, ma’am,” said Ana. “Yet there is one last question that troubles me most of all.”

“And what might that be?”

“The blackperch mushrooms,” said Ana.

Vashta blinked. “The…the what?”

“Well, presumably, Jolgalgan used blackperch mushrooms as a distraction at the halls of the Hazas—causing a fire to flare up immensely, drawing eyes as she slipped into a servants’ door.”