The Tainted Cup (Shadow of the Leviathan, #1)(51)

I looked back over my shoulder. Then I pulled on the reins of my horse and stopped.

The plains of Tala stretched out behind me, brilliant and viridine, yet the landscape was not flat, not everywhere: huge, tufty humps and hills lay here and there, some high, some sunken, and—strangest of all—each was covered with huge, ancient tree stumps like scales on a fish. The largest hill was enormous, almost like a small mountain, shot through with curving rock formations that were a glimmering pale green. The trees that covered its surface were not stumps but newly grown saplings, narrow and stretching into the sky, and their trunks were of many strange colors, violet and blue and a dull yellow.

I stared at the hill and saw something buried in its side. An appendage, perhaps, like a beetle’s leg—an enormous one, a quarter of a league long, covered in pale gray chitin and ending in a curious claw. I wondered what was buried in that hill.

And then I realized. The green rock formations in the hill were not rock at all.

They were bones. Ribs.

The leviathan’s carcass was not buried in the hill. The leviathan’s carcass was the hill.

I felt my hands trembling as they gripped the reins of my horse, my eye fixed on the huge, mountainous growth, covered with those strange, shimmering trees.

“Their blood changes all that’s about them,” said Miljin quietly.

I turned, alarmed, and realized he’d ridden up beside me without my noticing. “P-pardon?” I asked.

“Their blood,” he says. “When it hits the soil, it makes the grass grow like mad. Makes trees and plants of all kinds sprout out everywhere. Some start bearing fruit that…does things to you, if you eat it. Usually the Apoths burn the carcasses. Can’t do that now. Not with the breach there. Too many people about, and too many fumes.”

I cast my eyes beyond the enormous, grass-covered body of the dead leviathan and spied the wide, rambling black strip of the sea wall in the distance—and there, straight east, a tiny gap, the barest break in the ribbon of stone. Only then did I realize how far the leviathan had rampaged, how much territory it had crossed, and how close it had come to destroying Talagray, which suddenly felt hardly larger than the carcass before me.

How odd it was to meet your maker in this fashion; for all the wonders of the Empire—from Sublimes like myself, to cracklers and fretvines and Miljin’s muscles—came from the blood of such beings.

Miljin wheeled his horse back west. “Come on. Sun’s getting low. Let’s get in before curfew.”

My eye lingered on the chitinous limb extending from the hillock. I noted the color of its armor—so gray, and so pale—and reflected that its color was not unlike that of my own skin. Then I turned and left.



* * *



—

MILJIN AND I parted ways at the Trinity in Talagray, though he held me back for a moment. “Here,” he said. “You deserve this, after today.” He pulled Vartas’s shootstraw pipe from his pocket, snapped it in half, and held one half out to me. “Find a hot iron somewhere and enjoy the smoke.”

I took it from him, sniffing its end. It was spicy and aromatic. “I will, sir.”

“I’ll report to Uhad. You grab some grub and get to your master. I’ve no doubt she’ll want to dig all throughout your head.” He eyed the darkening sky. “Night’ll be here soon, and with it the curfew. So stay indoors and stay safe.”

“Understood, sir.”

He walked out into the courtyard, then paused midstep as a light rain began to fall. He shot me a look over his shoulder. “A shit end to a shit day!” he barked, half grinning, and strode off.

I smiled after him. Then I waited, counting the seconds and watching as his form receded into the sheets of rain.

I counted out a full two minutes. Then I turned, walked across the Iudex tower entryway, and slipped out into a side street.

All about me the city was closing. Food vendors and inns were bawling out their last calls, the humid air heavy with the scents of fat and spice. Legion patrols roamed the streets, holding their lanterns high and pulling out their curfew bells. Soon tarrying in the street would carry serious penalties—yet I had some final business to conduct.

I summoned the map of Talagray in my memory as I ventured farther into the city. Rona Aristan of the Engineering Iyalet, Secretary Princeps to Commander Blas for going on twelve years. Her address was carved into my skull like it was wrought of molten lead. She lived on the western side of the city, close to the Trinity. And if I hurried, I could make it there and back before curfew.





CHAPTER 16


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I FOUND ARISTAN’S NEIGHBORHOOD just as the rain receded, the stone streets bright and shining wetly as the last light of sunset drained from the sky. It wasn’t as fine as the gentry neighborhoods I’d glimpsed this morning, but it was nice enough, fretvine frames and white fernpaper walls. Aristan’s house was nestled in the back. I knocked on the door and waited.

Silence. I knocked again, got nothing. Then a third time. Still nothing.

I stepped back from the house and studied it again. All quiet and dark, no light within at all, not even a single mai-lantern. I read the mud in the yard about her house, but I could see no footprints. No one had trodden here at all during this wet day save myself.

I heard the first curfew bells echoing through the city, then scanned the landscape about me. I picked out a half-hidden area that would grant the widest view of the street and took up station there, my coat collar pulled high against the rain. When Aristan returned for curfew, I figured, I’d pounce.