Everyone looked at me. I simply frowned, for I had no idea at all what she meant.
“Madam Haza,” said Ana. “Am I correct in recalling that your father had a bejeweled ewer from which he enjoyed drinking wine?”
Fayazi reluctantly said, “He did. He had several, in fact.”
“I see. And did he often enjoy drinking wine,” asked Ana softly, “while he took his bath?”
Lightning danced up my bones then, and the memory surfaced in my mind: there, in the old man’s bath, a stone ledge; and all along it, many faded red rings from many past wine cups.
“He…he did…” said Fayazi.
“Then it’s as I thought,” said Ana. “On that very night, in his bath, Kaygi Haza enjoyed a cup of wine from his favorite ewer, right as the air was full of steam—and dappleglass spores. The ewer he drank from sat open to the air and was now tainted. And that same ewer was then used later at this secret meeting of Kaygi Haza’s favored Engineers, to pour the wine for all those young people who had come to indulge themselves. And then they drank. They drank, unaware that whatever poured forth from such a vessel now carried death itself—inevitable, painful, and awful.”
* * *
—
A HORRIFIED SILENCE hung over the courtroom.
“Truly?” asked Vashta, aghast. “Do you truly think this is how such a tragedy began?”
“I am almost completely certain,” said Ana. “That would explain why it took so much longer for the infections to—what is the word—to bloom. For the Engineers had likely consumed fewer spores than Kaygi Haza himself, and those who drank more wine died fastest. But none had sat and soaked in the spores and breathed them in, like the elder Haza did. I also suspect the spores succeed more in the lungs than the stomach. But still they succeeded, eventually. And all ten perished.”
Fayazi looked at her Sublimes, who stared back, speechless. The silence stretched on, and on; and Ana allowed it to swell, waiting for the perfect time to puncture it.
“And if things had gone just slightly differently,” she said, “just ever so slightly differently, we’d simply have ten dead Engineers on our hands, and nothing more. A tragedy, surely, but not a catastrophe. Yet two of those Engineers just happened to work on the wrong strut within the walls at the wrong time…and thus, the breach, and countless casualties.” She paused. “It really is unfortunate, isn’t it, Madam Haza.”
“What is?” said Fayazi.
“It is so unfortunate that you locked down your estate,” said Ana, “and burned your father’s corpse, and did not alert the Apoths to the contagion. For if you had, well…perhaps the past weeks might have gone differently.”
The temperature in the room begin to change then.
I could see it in Vashta’s face; the slow, boiling realization that this gentrywoman—powerful as she was—had perpetrated a conspiracy that had directly caused the breach; and I could see it in Fayazi Haza’s posture: in the stiffening in her back, as she came to understand that the seneschal of the canton was now beginning to believe that her own personal deeds had caused the collapse of the sea walls, and brought about the dire situation of the Empire.
“I…” stammered Fayazi. “I thought this was an interview…I thought there were threats against me?”
“I am getting there,” said Ana. “But to explain that, I must first explain Jolgalgan’s most unusual method of murder, which I am sure must have puzzled all of us. Why bother with dappleglass at all? Why use the same contagion that had once killed her canton, her home? Dappleglass, after all, is difficult, temperamental, and—obviously—murderously uncontainable. It seemed a symbolic choice. Almost like a personal vendetta. It made no sense—until we discussed the history of Oypat with the late Immunis Nusis, who had personally served there during the canton’s death.
“Nusis told us a most curious story,” said Ana. “She told us of how the Apothetikal Iyalet successfully created an effective graft against the dappleglass—a cure, in other words—but that they were not able to put it into production. For when they tried to implement their plan to do so, too many cantons raised too many legal entreaties about growing too many new reagents—and by the time those complaints were resolved, the contagion had spread too far, and Oypat’s fate was sealed. But…Nusis mentioned that there were four cantons in particular that were the most effective at blunting this plan to save Oypat. That would be the Juldiz, Bekinis, Qabirga, and Mitral cantons.”