The Tainted Cup (Shadow of the Leviathan, #1)(26)

I plodded through the house and found her kneeling before her quake contraption, which was chiming and clanking like mad. It was dark within, and I found her mai-lantern and gave it a shake. The little glowing worms within awoke, and their faint blue light slowly filtered throughout the room.

“Ma’am,” I said dully. “There’s been a breach. We need to get you prepared in case we need to evacuate.”

“Thank you, Din,” she said softly. “I had gathered as such. But there should be no need for an evacuation.”

“What do you mean, ma’am?”

“I have been monitoring the quakes since they began,” she said. She nodded to her contraption. “They’ve grown steadily quieter over the last hour. This indicates that the leviathan has retreated, probably farther to the south, back to the sea walls.” She looked up at me, still blindfolded. “It’s what they were trained to do.”

“Who?”

“The Legion,” she said. “They have armaments capable of distracting the leviathans, drawing them away from the cities and towns, and back to the walls—where all the bombards await. They plan to shoot it to death there, I imagine.” She took off her blindfold and looked up at me. She must have seen the terror and fury in my face, because she tried to smile, and asked, “Why don’t you make me some tea, Din?”

“Pardon, ma’am?” I asked faintly. “Tea?”

“Yes. You make such a good pot of tea, Din. I think that would be quite welcome now.”

I went through the motions thoughtlessly, starting the little fire in her stove, setting the kettle to boil atop it. I pulled pinches of dried leaves from the cotton sacks hanging above, moistened them with a few drops of water, and then carefully ground them in the mortar with slow, twisting movements. As the kettle shrieked, I took a few leaves of mint, broke them apart, and added them to the mix, before packing it all into the infuser, which I slotted into the kettle’s spout. Then I poured two cups and the air filled with a powerful, complex aroma.

“Smells wonderful,” said Ana. She sipped at her cup. “Tastes wonderful.”

I bowed my thanks, still unable to speak.

“And I note,” said Ana, “that you always make it the exact same way. Same twist of the pestle. Same pinches of the leaves. Exactly the same, every time.”

“A friend showed me how,” I said numbly.

We sat in the blue half light, clutching our cups and listening to the rain and the sound of the tocsin bells in the distance.

“Did you have any friends going out tonight?” she asked.

“A few. In Engineering. Haven’t seen much of them recently, since they got their assignments a while ago and I didn’t, but…” I trailed off, not knowing what to say. “I didn’t see them. Didn’t get to say goodbye.”

“If they’re Engineering, they should be safer,” said Ana. “Not safe, of course, but safer. They don’t send the Engineers in until the leviathan itself is dealt with. Then the Engineers take stock of the situation and patch up the fortifications as fast as they can. For that’s when things get trickier. They’ll relocate the bombards to defend the breach point, but…naturally, that makes every other part of the walls harder to defend.”

“So my friends won’t be in danger now,” I said, “but later?”

“Correct, and incorrect,” said Ana. “A breach is a terrible thing, Din. We’re all in danger now, for the rest of the wet season.”

“And what are we to do about that, ma’am?”

She shrugged. “Wait. And see.”



* * *



—

I STAYED UP all night with Ana, listening to the chiming of her contraption and her constant babble as she shot around the room, opening up books and massaging their pages with her head at an angle, sometimes reading aloud or voicing some bizarre fact or theory of hers.

“They use seakips in the third ring to pull barges through their canals,” she said once, “little swollen dolphin creatures with doglike faces, but apparently there’s been some sort of suffusion issue. The Apothetikals bred a new kind of oyster that can grow to great sizes, but the oyster hosts a germ that gets into the water, and this germ makes the seakips profoundly aroused, all the time. Apparently they rut themselves to death.”

“Is that so, ma’am,” I said, exhausted.

“Yes. Many bargemen have taken to castrating their seakips—but this is pretty tricky, Din, as the appropriate anatomy is not terribly accessible. Or identifiable. It takes a trained eye and a steady hand—in case you’re ever looking for a new job.”

I half smiled at such a gruesome idea. I knew she was trying to keep me distracted from all the horror and the worry, and I appreciated her for it.

Time stretched on. I was about to doze off where I sat—and then I sat up, eyes wide.

“It’s…gone,” I said. “Your chimes. It’s quiet.”

“Yes,” said Ana. She knelt before her contraption, which was now silent. The crackle of bombards in the distance had tapered off as well. “It seems it is.”

“Do you think they’ve really killed it, ma’am?”

“Probably. Hopefully. It’s early morning now. We’ll know in a day or so if it’s really dead.”