The Tainted Cup (Shadow of the Leviathan, #1)(68)

THE BODIES WERE gone now. All that was left was mud, blood, and the handful of Legion officers standing at the wall.

Ana stopped in the middle of the yard, face still angled to me, pale and cadaverous in the moonlight. “How are you doing? Are you well?”

“I’m all right, ma’am,” I said.

“What? Absurd. People tried to kill you, and you apparently killed them instead. How could you possibly be all right?”

“It was all very fast,” I said quietly. “I didn’t think at all while it…while it happened.”

There was a short silence, broken only by the muttering of the Legionnaires just past the gate.

“Well, you aren’t limping,” she said tersely. “Your pulse in your arm is strong and steady. And you aren’t gasping for breath. So you’re not hurt.”

“I’d have told you if I was, ma’am.”

“Yes, but you’re the dutiful sort of stupid young man who would hide an injury out of honor,” she snapped. “And I wished to be sure.”

I looked at her, surprised at the anger in her voice. Her wiry fingers dug into my arm like she was trying to hold me still.

“Have I done something wrong, ma’am?” I asked.

“Miljin said you killed two and disabled one,” she said. “Is that correct?”

“Possibly. I…I didn’t stay to confirm,” I said stiffly.

“He also said Strovi claims you fought remarkably well. That you said you remembered how to fight. Is that correct?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Describe it,” she said sharply. “Describe how that felt.”

I did so, struggling to articulate the queer feeling of my muscles remembering the movements, and then moving me about through space like I were furniture being moved in a room.

She nodded when I finished. “And back in Daretana. The way you made tea for me—you did it the exact same way, every time. Right down to the turn of the pestle.”

“Pardon, ma’am?”

“And then later, when Uxos tried to kill me. You moved quickly and attacked him quickly. Practically without thinking at all.”

I said nothing.

“And then there is your lockpicking,” she said. “You do not remember how to do it, exactly. You simply remember the movements.”

“Have I done something wrong, ma’am?” I asked again.

“No. But you’ve done something interesting. And to be honest, of all the things I’d expected to find interesting here, Din, I had not thought you’d be among them. Nor had I wished you to be. Thank Sanctum they were only deserters! When I first heard you’d been attacked at Suberek’s, I…I thought…”

“Thought what?”

She shook her head. Even though she was blindfolded, I could see fear in her face—the first time I’d ever seen any fear in it at all.

“It’s nothing,” she said.

“Doesn’t seem to be nothing, ma’am.”

“Well, it is, damn it! And now that I think of it, you did do something wrong, Din! You should have checked the building completely before going down into that basement!”

“Why?” I said.

“Because you didn’t know if you were truly alone in the house!” she said. “There could have been someone else in there with you, and you might not have known! Another deserter or…or something worse. You need to be smarter, child. I don’t get on well without an assistant, and I damned sure don’t want to lose you now!” She poked me in the chest. “People have been killed in this city for knowing things they shouldn’t—like Suberek! And Aristan! Yet it is our job to know things. Act accordingly to make sure you aren’t cleaned up as well!”

“You think this new killer is foolish enough to come after an Iudex officer, ma’am?”

“Of course. Of course!”

That flicker of fear to her face again. I remembered what Miljin had told me: Rumor has it, Dolabra’s previous assistant investigator ran into the wrong end of a sword…

“Now focus, boy,” said Ana. “Let us search the mill carefully. And try not to make it too hard for me to keep you alive!”



* * *



—

WE SEARCHED THE mill for an hour, all together. We could find almost no writing at all: no documents, no ledgers, no bills of sale, nothing. The only thing of note was Nusis’s report as she emerged from the basement of the mill. “A perforation at the base of the skull—and based on the bleeding of the man’s left eye, the weapon nearly penetrated straight through. A spike of some kind, I think. For the edges of the perforation are quite smooth.”

“Then that would suggest the murderer is physically augmented, yes?” said Uhad. He nodded toward Miljin. “Perhaps like the captain here.”

I glanced at Miljin—yet I saw he was staring at Ana, a worried look on his face.

“I would say so, yes,” said Nusis. “A very powerful individual—but not a large one. Not if they could fit in that basement. No crackler or augmented Legionnaire could manage that, I think. It’s very strange.”

“Disturbing…” Uhad sighed and rubbed at his eyes. “Yet we still don’t know where Suberek sent his last shipment of fernpaper.”