The Tainted Cup (Shadow of the Leviathan, #1)(123)

Miljin bounded forward, picked me and Ana up like we were but toys, and dragged us clear to the Iudex tower entrance.

Then came a familiar, horrid sound, akin to thick fabric ripping. I looked over my shoulder to see a green growth sprout from the base of the twitch’s neck, then surge up about her, tearing her asunder in a burst of dark blood, and enveloping her in a veil of bloody, dark green leaves.

“Oh, Sanctum,” whispered Vashta. “Oh, holy Sanctum…”

Fayazi Haza was screaming again. Her engraver tried to comfort her, but she was having none of it.

“By the titan’s unholy taint,” panted Miljin. “By the titan’s unholy fucking taint…”

Vashta tore her face away from the body hanging in the trees. “We need to evacuate this tower, if your goddamn room’s been poisoned, Dolabra!” she spat at her.

“I left the window open,” Ana said. And the spores lose effectiveness quickly. “It should be vented clear and is now perfectly sa—”

“Shut up!” said Vashta. “For once, just shut up, woman! Miljin—I have a city to evacuate. I shall need your aid in that. But for now, you take that woman to the Legion tower!” she said, pointing at Fayazi. “And you lock her up, titan be damned! The rest of you Legionnaires, with me!”

Vashta and the Legionnaires sprinted off into the city, the sky still screaming with bells and the streets now coursing with folk trying to evacuate. Miljin grabbed Fayazi and the engraver, then turned to me and said, “Get Dolabra to the cart train! Now!”

I was still in shock from all I’d done and could barely make sense of him. “The…the cart train?” I said.

“Yes! To evacuate! Emperor’s blood, there’s a fucking titan making landfall! Go!”





CHAPTER 39


| | |

THE EVACUATION OF THE city was, to use Vashta’s own words, nothing short of a fucking disaster.

Ana and I staggered out of the Iudex tower to find the city had erupted into utter chaos. Every street was choked with carts, with cargo, with people, with livestock, all jockeying for space on the lanes leading west. People bellowed curses over the sound of the ringing bells or cried out news that this or that distant street was clear. Only the Iyalet cart trains presented any kind of order, lined with Legionnaires bearing tall black banners and stretching along the street before the Trifecta, waiting to bear senior officers out of the city.

But it was clear that even by cart train, leaving the city was going to be impossible. There were simply too many people in the streets. No one, it seemed, was willing to be taken by surprise by a breach again, and all intended to flee.

I should have been terrified, but I was still too shocked to feel much at all. I just mutely stared at the surging throngs of folk.

“I rather think, ma’am,” I finally said to Ana, “that we aren’t leaving soon. Nor doing much at all.”

“No, Din,” Ana said softly. “What a thing it is, to be reminded that despite all the deeds and sorrows of the day, our work is small in comparison to what occurs at the walls.”

“Then…what are we to do?”

“Well. We could stay here, and vainly hope.” She cocked her head. “But…that feels like a waste of an opportunity. I’ve never seen a living leviathan, Din. I should like to do so, I think. Or have you look for me.”

I stared at her blearily. “You what?”

“Why, it’s the chance of a lifetime, Din! If we get to the right spot and snatch a spyglass from one of the Legionnaires here, we shall have the chance not only to see a titan on the shores of the Empire of Khanum, but behold the moment in which we learn if the Empire has a future at all. Who else could claim such a feat?” She took me by the arm. “Come. Let us go look and know if we shall survive the day together. And if not, then we will have time aplenty to make our peace with creation.”



* * *



—

I FETCHED A spyglass from a Legionnaire, and together we walked to the eastern part of the city, which was by now abandoned by the fleeing crowds. We came to a high earthworks rampart facing east, the noon sky yawning bright and clear and beautiful above, and in the distance rose the sea walls, just the barest thread of black running along the horizon.

“What do you see, Din?” Ana whispered.

I pressed the spyglass to my eye and peered out.

I saw the walls, tall and black and buffeted by earthworks. A whole landscape, it seemed, ripped from the earth and placed against the sea; and there, to the south, a narrow, ragged gap, and all about it lay broken stones and heaps of crumbled soil. Yet that was all I could see.

“It has not come yet, ma’am,” I said.

“Hm…the waiting is the awful part,” she said. “I’ve prepared to die many times in my life. I did last night, as I made my trap. I did this morn, as I poisoned my own rooms. Perhaps it is a wise thing, to prepare for death every day, just as the Empire prepares for death every wet season.”

I glanced at her. “You could have told me she was a twitch, ma’am.”

“I could have,” Ana said. “But I didn’t want you to try something gallant and stupid. Better to let the Legionnaires take her, I thought. There were enough of them. If only the bells had not rung, giving her a chance to escape…”