The axiom was silent. Ana began moving back, but she started speaking louder so the whole room could hear.
“The Hazas sent you here to clean up,” she said. “But the real mission was to get back that damn reagents key—the one filled with the cure for dappleglass. You learned from one of Kaygi’s many dirty sources that Nusis just happened to have a reagents key that had been recovered from Rona Aristan. You knew right away what it was. And with the leviathan approaching, there was no time. You got desperate. You went to her office, forced her to open the safe, and killed her—unaware that she and I had already swapped out the keys, and I had the real one in the chest in my rooms. Right upstairs, right now.”
I blinked at that, confused again. That couldn’t be so. Yet Ana kept talking.
“Very gutsy, to come here,” she said. “I wasn’t sure if you’d do it. I made sure not to ask for you at all, worried I might spook you. But you’re very loyal to the Haza clan. They told you to keep watch over their little sister, and that’s what you’re here to do.”
Fayazi was trembling now. Miljin stood and drew his sword.
I shot to my feet and did the same. The Legionnaires about us took that as a sign and drew their own blades.
The twitch’s cold, dark eyes flicked around the room, unnaturally quickly, counting us all.
“Fayazi?” said Ana. “You can move away now. Hurry, please.”
With a strangled cry, Fayazi Haza shot to her feet, shook off the twitch’s grip, and ran across the room. She pressed her back against the far wall and stared back at the twitch, sobbing hysterically.
Vashta looked on, stunned. Then she blinked and steeled herself. “Miljin?”
“Yes, ma’am?” said Miljin, his green blade raised.
“Arrest this person,” said Vashta. “Bind her hands and feet. Immediately.”
“Kol!” called Miljin. “Your engraver’s bonds!”
My hands shaking, I unhooked them from my belt, then tossed them to Miljin. He and the Legionnaires advanced on the twitch, blades held high. She stayed seated behind the table with her hands in her lap, totally still except for her eyes, which kept darting about, reading the room.
“There’s too many of us,” said Miljin to her. He handed the bonds off to a Legionnaire, keeping his own blade pointed at the twitch. “Too many, even for you.”
“I know,” said the twitch quietly. She raised her hands.
“Good,” said Miljin. He kept approaching, making sure his blade was angled toward her. “Keep raising them. Slowly now. Slowly. Slowly…”
I felt myself trembling. A fluttering to my eyes, and I recalled what Miljin had said: You meet a twitch, there’s no training I can offer that’d save you…They were supposed to be unbeatable in combat—for about a minute a day, mind. After that, their muscles wore out and they had to recover…
Then came the awareness of all the folk that this person had killed: Aristan, and Suberek, and poor Nusis…And perhaps Ana’s previous assistant as well, for all I knew.
“Slowly,” said Miljin. “Slowly give me your hands…”
The twitch extended her arms. Miljin nodded to the Legionnaire on his right, who took her by the arm and snapped one end of the bonds about her wrist.
Then they all froze.
A sound from out the window, out in the city, starting low and then slowly growing.
Bells. First dozens of them, then hundreds of them, their high, raucous peals falling over the countryside like a storm.
“Tocsins,” said Vashta hoarsely. “Tocsin bells. But we haven’t yet seen…”
We all looked to the window, and the east.
For a moment there was nothing but mottled clouds; but then a small, flittering green star rose in the distance; and it was joined by another and another, arcing into the darkness and leaving trails of smoke behind, until all the skies seemed swarming with bright, flickering green lights.
“Green flares,” Vashta said quietly. “A leviathan is here.”
The twitch moved.
CHAPTER 38
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I DID NOT REALLY see what the twitch did. The movement was so quick it was barely perceivable, like the flit of a moth’s wing in the shadows. But then there was a scream, and when I whirled to see, there was blood.
The Legionnaire on the twitch’s left was falling to the ground, blood pouring from her throat. The one on the twitch’s right suddenly gasped and coughed, a dark splotch spreading on his chest, and collapsed to his knees. Through the spray of blood I saw her, this dark figure with cold eyes, my engraver’s bonds swinging from one wrist and a long stiletto clutched in her hands, its blade so thin it seemed hardly more than a length of black hair. Where she had gotten her weapon from, I could not tell; she had moved too fast for me to see any of it.