“And then you asked how big the dead titan had been, the one they’d taken the claw from.”
“Yes, ma’am?”
“Am I correct in believing that the axiom—the Sublime enhanced to process calculations—said nothing to any of this? She voiced no numbers at either time?”
“Ah…no, ma’am. She did not.”
Ana’s fingers fluttered in her dress. “And on Fayazi’s arm. You spied paint there, as if to conceal bruising. Like someone had gripped her arm very tight.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Interesting…” whispered Ana. “That is all. I simply wished to confirm. You may go, and sleep.”
We thanked her, exited, and departed for our rooms, as it was very late in the evening by now.
It wasn’t until I’d undressed and laid my head on my pillow that I realized Ana had not commented at all upon my issues with text. Not once. Before I could think on it further, the tower shifted and creaked below me, my eyes fell shut, and I slept.
CHAPTER 31
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“TELL THE HAZAS?” SAID Kalista. Her manicured eyebrows mounted her forehead. “About the investigation? Of course I didn’t.”
Ana leaned sideways in her chair in the arbitration room, her blindfolded head bent at an angle as the morning sun crept into the arbitration room. I stood behind her, my face carefully circumspect.
“Why not?” Ana asked politely. “Why wouldn’t you?”
Kalista laughed dully, her new clay pipe pinched in her fingers before her mouth. Again, I was reminded of a plump little purple courtesan dove, this one perhaps attempting to smooth its feathers after a fright.
“Well, it’s not like I’m a close friend of Fayazi or some such,” Kalista said. “Not like we have tea and gossip over which Legionnaire has the shapeliest thighs.” Her smile dimmed. “Certainly wouldn’t expect them to talk to me during…Well. All that’s happened.”
I glanced at Ana, who did not react. Word of Kaygi Haza’s murder had spread quickly throughout the city. It was no surprise that Kalista had caught wind of it.
“But you did mention it to someone,” said Ana, in tones of tremendous sympathy. “Perhaps there was someone else at the party you wished to contact…just to confirm their well-being.”
A quiver to Kalista’s oysterdusted eyelids. “Well,” she said grudgingly. “I was concerned about Commander Hovanes. Of the Apoths.”
Ana waited patiently. I stood behind her, hands behind my back, listening and watching.
“He was my…companion for that evening,” Kalista admitted. “And he is a friend. I did wish to notify him that…that we had discovered a potential threat to his health.”
“And is he,” asked Ana, “acquainted with the Hazas?”
“I was his guest,” said Kalista. “He was the one invited to the affair. So, yes. I would say so. More than I, at least.”
Ana nodded, plainly pleased to have determined the source that had tipped off the Hazas to all our discoveries. “I see. Now! Why don’t you describe the party, Kalista?” Ana said. “Your movements, who you saw, and when you saw them.”
Kalista began to speak. I listened, sniffing the vial scented of mint, engraving every word.
She arrived at midday, she said, and had been searched at the gates by the guards and exposed to the estate’s many telltale plants. Having proven unarmed and untouched by all contagion, she and Commander Hovanes had been permitted to enter the grounds, pass through the winding walkway between the white trees and the bird-perch gate, and approach the party.
“Yet to call it a party,” Kalista said, smiling, “is to call a war a spat!” This hadn’t been a convivial gathering over wine and mussels, she told us: it was akin to a high imperial ceremony, an almost celestial orchestration of art, food, music, and company, like something out of the ancient days.
Pipers placed at the front steps, their music low and sultry. Banners and ribbons waving at the doorways. Fires of green and silver flickering in every hearth. “And then there was the food,” she sighed. “And the wine. And the air…For some chambers held moodblooms. Just tarrying in the smokes of those plants for a moment made the very feeling of time change…If the Khanum still walked these lands, they’d have expected to be greeted similarly.”
“Very nice,” said Ana dryly. “But the people, Kalista. Did you see many people?”
“Oh, of course!”