* * *
—
KEPHEUS AND I walked the lanes of Talagray, moving slowly as he was on a crutch—a memento he’d won when the titan-killer had been fired. “Blasted me clear off my platform,” he said sheepishly. “Twisted my ankle. Medikkers should have me right in a day, but they’ve larger issues to deal with.”
“I saw it from a distance,” I said. “The thing, coming to the breach. I saw it…It had a face? And seemed to be trying to speak?”
“We killed it,” he said gruffly. “And held it back. That’s all’s that needs to be said of it.”
We did not talk any more of what we’d witnessed, he at the walls and I in the city. The things we’d seen and done now felt too big for words. Silence was a better language. Yet I did tell him of all that Captain Miljin had just said to me.
“Yes…” said Kepheus sadly. “It must be a hard thing, to go from the Legion to the Iudex.”
“Why so?”
“Well, in the Legion, you know each wet season if you have won or lost. Yet in the Iudex, you can do all your duties aright, and catch every crooked soul—but at the end, there is no putting right what wrong was done.”
I said nothing to that. I thought of Uhad, and how all his memories of so many injustices had changed him. I wondered, for the first time, if my own would do the same to me.
“You’re leaving,” he said finally. “Yes?”
“I…I think so,” I admitted. “Our investigation is done. And you?”
“I shall stay here. My family has asked me to return home, but…There’s more to do. And I mean to do it, until there is no more.”
“？‘The fulcrum on which the rest of the Empire pivots,’？” I quoted.
“Ha! You remembered.”
I gave him a look.
“Oh, right,” he said. “I suppose that’s not terribly surprising…But. Here. I’ve a gift for you, Dinios.”
“Oh. Well. You didn’t…”
He handed me a paper package. I did not need to untie it to know what it was: the scent of tobacco flowed from the paper the second I squeezed it.
“Pipes!” I said, laughing. “Shootstraw pipes. You’ll bankrupt yourself, giving me these.”
“I won’t.” He smiled at me. “I just hope they taste as good as the one we shared.”
I smiled back. “I don’t know how they could. That one had its own taste.”
We fell silent, facing the east. Perhaps it was the sudden weight of so many memories I now had within me, but I felt tears in my eyes, and tried to wipe them from my face.
“I’m only here for a few days longer,” I said. “It feels so little time.”
He leaned forward and kissed me. He smelled of leather, and oil, and the frail curls of fretvine leaves.
“This is Talagray,” he said. “Nothing is certain.”
I took him by the hand, and together we returned to the city to find what sweetness we could in the few days we had.
CHAPTER 42
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I STARED BACKWARD AT the towers of Talagray as our carriage rumbled along, the Plains of the Path and the massive sea walls slowly retreating into the morning mist. I counted the remaining months of the wet season and grappled with the knowledge that in a mere handful of months more another season would come.
“Will it hold?” asked Ana’s voice softly.
I turned back around to her, sitting blindfolded in the seat across from me, with her hands folded pleasantly in her lap.
“Pardon, ma’am?” I said.
“Will it hold—that’s what you’re thinking, yes?” she said.
“Do you read thoughts now, ma’am?”
“Oh, no. It is the obvious thought one might have upon leaving Talagray—or coming to it. Will all those artifices and structures, built from the blood and toil of so many and planned by so many brilliant minds…will they hold in the face of what’s coming?” She cocked her head, grinning. “I wish I could read your thoughts, Din. Instead I’m forced to ask you stupid questions.”
“You’ve the rest of the trip to torment me, ma’am,” I said wryly. “No need to start early.”
“Mm. But I’m curious about one particular question I have for you.”
“And what’s that?”
“I’d like to ask you—what is the Empire, Din?”
I blinked as the carriage bounced along. “Ah…pardon, ma’am?”