The Tainted Cup (Shadow of the Leviathan, #1)(55)

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Then I’ll have a cup.”

She sat down on the bed as I poured her one.

“First…I have a question.” She fixed me in a fearsome glare. “I want answers about something you did.”

“Ah. Y-yes, ma’am? Did I do something wrong?”

“Yes! Very wrong! Why the hell didn’t you tell me you knew how to pick locks?”

“Oh,” I said sheepishly. “Well. I don’t really know how, ma’am. I just memorized the movements to unlock three basic types of locks.”

She stared at me, outraged. “That…that is basically the goddamn definition of ‘knows how to pick locks,’ boy! What an absurd thing! What the hell else do you know how to do?”

I handed her the cup. “I do seem to be developing a talent for tolerating verbal abuse and mad questions, ma’am.”

She glared at me again. “I wish to know more of your lockpicking, Din…But for now, let’s start dissecting all this, beginning with this Captain Kiz Jolgalgan. For she is of great interest to me.”

“Since she might be our only witness for the poisoning?” I asked.

A long slurp of tea. “No. Because I rather like her for being our murderer.”

I stared at her as she dabbed her lips on her cloak.

“Beg pardon?” I asked.

“I mean, who’s more experienced than anyone with contagions?” Ana mused. “Apoths. And now you’re telling me an Apoth was going to all these secret meetings with the Engineers? And is now possibly the lone survivor?”

“You…you really think this Jolgalgan might be our poisoner, ma’am?”

“Possibly!” said Ana. “I don’t have all the answers yet, of course. Dunno why she’d want to kill all her friends, or why she chose the maddest fucking method ever to do it. Or, indeed, if she also intended to bring down the sea wall and imperil the whole of the goddamn Empire, too! But…it hangs! Though it is but a scrap of information, it hangs together, a bit. Captain Miljin has surely notified the Legion to keep an eye out for this Jolgalgan by now. But please get ahold of Nusis tomorrow, Din, and see what the Apoths can dig up on her. They must have files on the woman’s alterations. I want to know what Jolgalgan can do, where she’s been, what capacities she’s served in, and anyone and everyone who might have served alongside her. Let us see if my hunch is right.”

“Understood,” I said.

“Good. Next—the reagents keys! Show them to me, please.”

I slid them both out—the one Miljin and I had found in Jilki’s quarters, and the one I’d found in the empty house near Aristan’s residence—and gave them to her.

“What an odd thing, to find three in one day…” Ana held Jilki’s key to her eye. “But Miljin wasn’t wrong. This key is for a highly warded portal. I believe only Imperial Treasury banks require five or more reagents…Fascinating. But this other one…” She did the same to the second one, peering through it like a tiny spyglass. “It’s not the same at all. So plain, and so simple…Sanctum knows what portal it’s for.” She chewed her lip for a moment, then held up the advanced one I’d found in Jilki’s quarters. “But I actually think I know what this one goes to—for surely it must unlock the place where all our Engineers were poisoned.”

I nodded. “Whatever room or building or chamber where they were all meeting secretly.”

“Exactly. Which is quite a find! Good work. If all is going aright, Captain Strovi should be out in Talagray now, collecting all the fernpaper orders for all the millers for the past four weeks. If we find one place that suddenly had to replace all their fernpaper…and if that place also happens to have a reagents portal, and if this key successfully opens it…”

My blood began to tick inside my ears. “Then that has to be the place of the poisoning.”

“Yes! And you’ve also gotten us a timeline for all this, dear Din—eight nights before the breach, the sixth of this month. If that all lines up, we can then see if this missing Jolgalgan was present at that place, at that time—and what she did there, and where she’s gone. And, perhaps, how she connects to Commander Blas’s murder, over two weeks ago now.”

My eye wandered back to the sack of talints. “I…don’t suppose all that money has something to do with it, ma’am?”

“Though it feels obvious, I…am unsure,” she sighed. “In fact, your discoveries about Blas are so great, they almost make my head a little heavy…For suddenly he’s not just somewhat corrupt, allowing the Hazas to treat him to lewd holidays at their houses—but is in fact possibly the most corrupt Imperial officer in recent memory! And I worry…What if this corruption doesn’t stop at Blas?” She turned her blindfolded head toward the closed window. “What if other officials are just as complicit as he is?”

There was a tense silence.

I felt my skin crawl as I realized what she meant. “You mean…the investigation team? You’re worried about our own colleagues?”

“I am,” she said quietly. “The investigation thus far does not seem to have been well managed here. Blas should have been looked at. Aristan’s body should have been discovered before now. But I am reluctant to assume maliciousness when incompetence is a better explanation…Hm. Let me see the wall pass.”