I swallowed. I could see the plaizaier raising the front of her dress and fanning it again; and there, amid the flicker of red, a glimpse of her body, and a winking tuft of pubic thatch.
I tried to keep my eyes on Fayazi. That was when I noticed an odd smudge of white on the side of the gentrywoman’s dress, almost like paint.
Trembling, I looked at Fayazi’s bare arm. Was that paint I spied there? And beneath it, the dark cloud of a bruise—perhaps in the shape of fingertips? Even in that mad moment, I struggled to make note of it.
“What does your immunis know of my father?” said Fayazi, louder. “What has he done?”
Suddenly the axiom was beside her. “Calm, mistress,” she hissed. “Calm…”
“What does she know about him and Taqtasa Blas?” Fayazi demanded.
All dissolved to chaos then. I ignored it all and bit down on the pipe, furious and confused, incensed to be denied control over my own senses.
And then I felt it—a fluttering in my eyes as a memory awoke.
I knew that smell: oranje-leaf and spice. I had smelled it on the scarf of the dead Princeps Misik Jilki, in the Engineering quarters, the day after I’d first come to Talagray.
And I had smelled it in Daretana, too: from Commander Blas’s oil pot.
All three smells were exactly the same.
I gritted my teeth and turned my face to Fayazi Haza. “Y-you l-l-lied to m-me,” I said, forcing the words through my clenched mouth.
A furrow in Fayazi’s smooth brow. “What?”
“S-Signum M-M-Misik Jilki,” I said. “She was h-here. Sm-melled like…like this. I know. Oranje-leaf and s-spice. After she’d been t-touched by the same oils and p-perfume as your…your court dancers here.” I grinned madly. “She f-felt their skin. Knew their flesh. Maybe in…in this same r-room. Didn’t she? Her along w-with…all the others.”
The axiom retreated to the walls, dark eyes watching warily like I’d drawn steel.
“What are you talking about?” spat Fayazi.
“D-did they smell j-just like Commander Blas?” I leaned forward. “For he had a taste f-for the aroma, too, didn’t he? He c-came to like it. That’s wh-why he had a…p-pot of his own.”
Fayazi stared at me, stunned.
“You lied to m-me,” I whispered. “They c-came here. Frolicked with y-your court dancers. And th-then they were y-yours. But…b-but wh-what did you get from them, ma’am? What did you get from all those d-dead Engineers?”
Fayazi looked to her Sublimes. When they said nothing, she flicked a hand at her court dancer, who withdrew to the shadows of the room. Then she snapped: “Get him out of here. Get him out of here and get him gone!”
Then I was ripped backward out of my seat.
* * *
—
MY HEAD SPUN as the two guards marched me through the darkness of the landscape outside. I had never been handled by a person altered for strength, but the second the guards touched me I was like a small child struggling against a parent, my limbs pinned back and my flailing quickly and effortlessly contained. My elbow screamed in pain as one of them bent my arm too far. I cried out, telling them to release me, but they ignored it.
Finally we came to the landing under the claw of the leviathan, and the guards released me. “Down!” one snarled at me. “Down the stairs and into the carriage, damn you!”
I shambled down the steps and crawled into the back of a waiting carriage. The guard slammed it behind me and said to the driver, “Dump him off at the gates, but don’t take him any farther.” Then the carriage started forward, and we were off.
I peered back at the halls of the Hazas as we took off down the estate road, my head still spinning. Yet I saw someone had come to the top of the steps, and now stood below the massive leviathan’s claw: a silvery figure, white and ghostly, looking down on me.
I locked eyes with Fayazi Haza. She seemed utterly transformed in that moment, her eyes wide and terrified and desperate in the dark, like she was a prisoner I was abandoning in her cell. Then her Sublimes ran to her, and her axiom took her by the arm once more, pulling her back, and she was lost in the darkness.
The gates of the Hazas opened, the carriage slid to a stop, and then the door fell open. “Out!” barked the driver.
I did as he bade, but as I stepped down I saw there was a small crowd of people waiting for me: Legionnaires, two of them clutching mai-lanterns; and there, at their front, stood Captain Miljin.
“Easy, boy,” he said. He took me by the shoulder. “Are you all right? Are you whole?”