The Tainted Cup (Shadow of the Leviathan, #1)(56)

I handed it over to her as well. She flipped through it rapidly, fingers dancing across the pages. “What a dirty bunch of business! Business that apparently required Blas to store money in a place far less official than, say, a box at an Imperial Treasury bank, where a commander wielding such sums would be noticed. And if Madam Aristan was traveling back and forth between Talagray and these four distant cantons—Qabirga, Juldiz, Bekinis, and Mitral…Well.” She shut the wall pass with the snap. “She must’ve been the bag man.”

“The…the what, ma’am?”

“The courier, the person who carries the money. Blas must have been sending her to the third ring to either pay people off or take payments from them. A better courier you’d never find—for who’d look twice at an elderly Iyalet secretary? Yet—what was Blas paying or getting paid for? What the hell was the bastard doing? We don’t know yet. But it eats at me.”

She rocked back and forth for a moment, head cocked, yellow eyes thin. I stayed silent, letting her ponder.

“Well, Din,” she said. “I now have another question for you.”

“Y-yes, ma’am?”

She pushed up her blindfold until one yellow eye peered at me from beneath it. “What do you think the odds are that Rona Aristan and Commander Blas were killed by the same person?”

I considered it, my eyes fluttering as I summoned all my memories. I thought about it for a long while.

“I think…I think very low, ma’am?” I said finally.

She nodded, satisfied. “And why is that?”

“One murder was…well, more efficient. More typical. They broke in and…and did something to the victim’s head. Stabbed it, perhaps. And no one even knew anything had happened. But the other was more elaborate and required far more work. Planning well in advance. And a method of murder most unusual. They seem too different.”

“Erupting from within due to a sudden vegetal growth is, I concede, pretty fucking unusual,” Ana said acidly. “But I think you are right. We now have two murderers, Din. Two murderers with two different methods, and two very different sets of interests. The most obvious conclusion for this new murderer is that they are here to clean up. Blas is dead, but his connections to all this dirtiness still exist. Thus, they are here to eliminate anything that could connect Blas with this greater corruption…including any human beings who are inconveniently alive.”

“But…we have no idea who this new murderer could be—correct, ma’am?”

Ana went very, very still, her head bowed. “A hole in her head, you told me…” she said softly. “Tell me—was it very small?” She held up her fingers about a quarter smallspan across. “This big, say?”

“Yes, ma’am. Thereabout.”

“And there were no other bruises or wounding to the body?”

“None that I could see, ma’am.”

“How peculiar,” she whispered. “Do…do you know how difficult it is to pierce the human skull, Din?”

“I, ah, have never attempted it myself, ma’am.”

“It is quite difficult. It takes abnormal strength and speed to do so. Especially speed. The velocity required, and the proper tools…It’s all rather stunning, you see.”

There was another silence, like she’d fallen into a reverie.

“Have you seen deaths like this before, ma’am?” I asked slowly. “Or rather, murders?”

She did not answer for some time. When she spoke again, her voice was low and soft: “Here is what we shall do. First, you’re going to take this to Nusis tomorrow.” She held up the simple reagents key I’d found in Aristan’s safehouse.

I took it from her. “What will she want with this?”

“Well, while I have a good idea what the other key opens, I’ve no idea for this one at all. And Apoths have arts that can reverse engineer many reagents. We can’t learn which exact portal this key opens, but Nusis will be able to tell us what kind of portal it opens. The make of the portal, the breed—that may help us narrow the search.”

“All right. And the money, ma’am?”

“The money and the wall pass we shall…use,” she said slowly. “We shall use it to determine if our colleagues on this investigation are true and faithful servants of the Empire. For I still worry, Din—why did they not look into Blas? Why did they not seek out Aristan? These are very common procedural tasks! Did someone on the team know Aristan had been murdered? Did they know Blas was so wildly corrupt?” She cocked her head. “Could Kalista be false? She seems to have a taste for things rich and fine. Or perhaps it is Nusis? For she worked alongside Blas on the Preservationist Boards. Or is Uhad, so old and feeble, willing to be paid for some comfort in his later days? Or perhaps Miljin? Or is none of it malfeasance, and all of it is simple ineptitude? I do not know.”

A tense silence. I felt a terrible sense of dread brewing in me.

“And…how shall we use the money to answer any of those questions, ma’am?” I asked.

“Oh, well, Din.” She smiled wearily. “You’re going to take that money and that wall pass…and you’re going to stick it with Aristan’s corpse. Someplace where it is easily found. Then I shall ask Uhad to investigate…and we shall see how much of that money makes it back to us.”