The Tainted Cup (Shadow of the Leviathan, #1)(85)

“You…you are suggesting,” the engraver said slowly, “that someone…posted the poison to the lady’s house? Carried by a scribe-hawk?”

“Possibly. You get a lot of them coming here, I’d expect. And a blade of grass would be a simple thing for such a creature to carry. Do you check your hawks the same way you checked your guests for your party?”

“Do you really think,” the engraver said, “that having had this poison carried here upon a scribe-hawk, one of the lady’s servants just took it off the bird and…what, left it lying about?”

“I would normally think it unlikely,” I said coolly, “but then, I would also think someone navigating your servants’ passages, breaking the top door open, and then you not noticing either would be very unlikely. And yet, that is evidently what has happened.”

A frosty pause. All three of them glared at me.

“Very few are allowed in our rookery,” Fayazi said. “Even I was not permitted there, until recently. Only my father and his most trusted servants possessed access.”

“I must review all avenues of entry, ma’am,” I explained. “The rookery, the walls—everything.”

“Would you still wish to see it, Signum,” the axiom said, “if you knew that we had burned all of the master’s correspondence after his death?”

I tried not to let my frustration show in my face. Of course. Of course they’d burned it all. Perhaps for contagion, but also to destroy evidence, surely.

Yet Ana had told me to get into the rookery. Perhaps there might still be something of value there.

“Yes,” I said smoothly. “Of course I would.”

Fayazi thought about it. “Then I will allow you a moment.”

“There is nothing there for him to see, mistress,” said the axiom. “We canno—”

“They tell me this boy is the one who investigated Blas’s murder,” said Fayazi sharply. She glared back at her servant. “Perhaps he can give us assistance.” She looked at me. “Five minutes, Signum, and no more.”

She turned and began walking, and I and her retinue followed.





CHAPTER 28


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AS WE WALKED I peppered Fayazi and her Sublimes with questions about her father’s correspondence. Had there been anything unusual? Any packages that had been laid aside? Any letters or correspondence from unusual places? Part of this was to maintain my story as to why I wished to see the rookery, but I also wanted to learn as much about Kaygi Haza’s correspondence as I could, even if it was now burned.

But their responses were short, clipped, and inarguable: “No,” or “Certainly not,” or “Not that I recall.” Nothing useful whatsoever, and the axiom eventually stopped answering altogether.

Finally we came to the rookery, a tall, circular tower built into the northwest side of the estate. I smelled the place before Fayazi’s Sublime opened the door for me: the musk of straw, the roil of humidity—and, of course, the ripe, acrid scent of birdshit.

The engraver opened the door and beckoned me inside. I looked up as the shadowy tower yawned above me, the sunlight filtering in through the slots along the side of the roof high above. The darkness was rippling with clicks and troks from the birds, who were nestled in wooden cubbies lining the walls in a spiral.

“There is a desk here,” said Fayazi’s engraver, gesturing to the corner, where an ornate desk of white wood sat beneath a small roof of green cloth—to prevent it from being shat upon, I guessed. “It was here that the master would read and answer critical letters immediately. But it is empty now. We considered burning the desk as well, but…”

“It is an heirloom,” said Fayazi. “From the Khanum days. Older than this very canton, certainly.”

I stared at the desk, thinking. If there were no letters here to review, then what was there to see?

I looked up at the birds nestled above. I could not see the birds themselves, but occasionally I caught the gleam of a bright, amber eye peering out between the wooden bars of the doors. The cubbies appeared to have been installed in pairs, little sets of two running up and down the walls, with little bronze plates installed beneath them. Interesting.

“How do they work?” I asked the engraver.

“Work?” said the engraver. “They’re altered. That’s how they work.”

“Yes, but—how do you manage them? What’s the process, please?”

He sighed. “They’re trained in pairs, one in each location. One for incoming, one for outgoing, as it were. Each bird has been suffused to possess not only great stamina and speed, but also a great memory for the map of the earth. And each pair has exactly one destination they’ve been trained to fly back and forth to.”

“How are they trained to do so?”

“Each bird has a deficit of a compound in its body—one that’s necessary for them to live—and each pair is trained to learn that they can only receive those compounds at these two specific locations. Usually in a bit of sukka melon. The bird completes the journey and is then given a sukka melon as a reward. It all becomes very mechanical.”

I looked up at the cubbies above, listening to the quiet troks.

“The plates underneath each pair of cubbies indicates this fixed destination?” I asked.