“We’re getting close, ma’am,” I said hoarsely.
“You sound,” she said, “a touch shook there, Din.”
“I think it’d be mad if I didn’t, ma’am. The only comfort I have is knowing you’re accustomed to things like this.”
She frowned. “Accustomed? Hell, Din, I’ve no idea what I’m fucking doing.”
“I…I had thought, ma’am,” I said, “that your career in the Iudex had taken you across the Empire?”
“Well, sure, but breaches in the sea walls? Dead leviathans? This is all totally new boots to me, as the old maid says.” She pressed her hand against the wall, grinning as she felt the vibrations of the carriage. “We must analyze it for what it is—a new phenomenon, with its own idiosyncrasies and aberrations, all articulating a larger design. And that’s your job, Din. To go and see. Exciting, isn’t it?”
The mammoth gates of Talagray opened, and we trundled through.
CHAPTER 11
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I KNEW FROM THE maps that at the center of the city sat what was called the Trifecta: the offices of the Legion, Iudex, and Engineering Iyalets, around which the other offices gathered like a small constellation. Our Legion driver piloted us toward it, navigating the churning traffic running about the fretvine towers. It was hard to catch the nature of the city from within the carriage, but it felt an improvised place: slapdash fernpaper houses fluttering about us like flocks of fragile moths, with fernpaper signs on leaning poles denoting smithies, boardinghouses, sotbars. The only permanent thing seemed to be the roads and foundations, wrought of stone and brick. All else was impermanent and haphazard. A sketch or a doodle of civilization, perhaps, hastily done on a canvas of soaking stone.
Finally the Trifecta came into view: three tall, conical fretvine towers, each sealed with mossclay and arrayed with the black, blue, or red colors of their Iyalet.
“Keep your eyes open,” Ana said to me. She wasn’t smiling anymore.
“Trying to take it all in as best I can, ma’am.”
“Bother less with the sights,” she said, “and more with the people. You’re going to be with a lot of elite officers soon, Din. They won’t ask you to talk much, but you need to watch them. Watch what they look at, what disturbs them, and get it all for me. I want to know who we’re working with.”
“Is it vialworthy, ma’am?” I said, grabbing my engraver’s satchel.
“Of course! Pick a glass and stick it up your damn nose quick!”
We rumbled into the courtyard of the Trifecta. A small group of people were gathering in wait for us before the Iudex building, no more than a half-dozen Engineers, Apoths, and officers in Iudex dark blue.
I studied the Iudex officers most as we pulled up. There were two of them: one a tall, thin, gray-faced man whose breast bore the two bars signifying he was the investigator; and there, beside that heraldry, the eye within a box, indicating he was an engraver, like me. Next to him was a grizzled brick of a man with enormous shoulders, six span tall and six span wide, squinting at us as we pulled up. This man had evidently been altered for strength, so much so he could quite likely cleave a person in two. Upon his breast I spied a twinkle: the bar and the flower, indicating he was an assistant investigator.
I stared at him. This scarred, broad, blunt instrument of a human being was my Talagray equivalent. Even though I was nearly a span taller than him, I had never felt so young and so small in all my life.
When the carriage came to a stop I opened the door, clambered out, and helped Ana climb down. Though the crowd was small, I felt every eye upon me like they were a leaden weight.
The Talagray investigator—the tall, thin man—approached and bowed. “Ana,” he said. “It’s an honor to see you once more.”
“Tuwey Uhad!” Ana said cheerily, grinning like a sharkfish. “By Sanctum, it’s been years. Or decades, perhaps?”
“Just years,” said Uhad. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.” His face was gaunt, and he looked weary—he probably hadn’t slept in days—but he allowed a small smile. He was a reedy, gloomy fellow who looked more like an advocate who argued cases before the magistries of the Iudex than a soldier. But then, I realized, that was probably what most investigators actually looked like.
Uhad’s eyes fluttered slightly as he looked upon Ana: a trembling in his pupils, a twitching in his cheek. An engraver indeed, then. “Commander-Prificto Vashta sends her apologies,” he said. “She wished to be here, but she has been appointed seneschal of the canton. A grave formality—but a necessary one.”