I stared into my eyes, remembering.
The mixing of my suffusions. The way the medikkers had muddled them in a bowl with a pestle. The splash and coil of the milk. And then the chalky taste at the back of my throat as I drank, and drank, and drank.
Then their whisper in my ear: I could take a sleeping draft, and slumber through what was coming; though this made the transition longer, and I might dream. Yet I’d told them I wished to stay awake. I wished to comprehend what was happening to me. To see it, and know, and remember.
Then came four miserable, awful days of hallucinations and headaches and insomnia, days and days of wandering in the dreary dark, time stretching about me like the black plains of an endless desert. For my mind was being reforged within my skull; and as it changed, its concept of time changed as well.
And when I emerged from that dark, I was different. My skin was gray, certainly, but I no longer formed normal memories. For a memory is just a sketch a mind makes of one’s experiences, imperfect and interpretive; yet what my mind made, from that moment on, was perfect, absolute, and endless.
I stood in the Iudex fretvine tower, feeling it dance in the wind. I stared at my face, my eyes fluttering as I studied the tiny scars and imperfections here and there. The origin of each minuscule wound persisted perfectly in my mind.
I turned to look at my back and caught the faint gleam of a handful of scars. Three times Captain Thalamis had caned me during my training, yet he’d always saved his cruelest strokes for the end. The snap and crack of the cane still echoed in my ears.
“You’ve been through worse,” I said to my reflection.
My eyes looked like I was straining to believe it.
Then a quiver in the floor, the faintest reverberation. I went to the window, cracked it, peeked out. The city lay quiet and still, no shouts or cries. A quake, but not one worth troubling over, it seemed.
My eyes lingered on the darkness in the east. I saw no flares, neither green nor any other color. I reflected that, should I fail in my task, and should more Engineers die here, then I might soon see those flares, and the walls in the distance might fall. And then, of course, I would have far more to worry about than sending my dispensations home.
CHAPTER 13
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TALAGRAY ERUPTED AS DAWN fell across the city, the streets and lanes and corridors swarming with foot traffic like ants tumbling out of a broken anthill. The tides of people were tinted by the various Iyalet colors as they scurried to their duties, rainbows of muddy reds and purples and blacks. The great machinery that made the Empire work was coming to life.
Through this swarming mass of people strode Captain Miljin, stomping along with his long scabbard swinging at his side as I followed behind him, my huge pack rattling on my back. I couldn’t see any rhyme nor reason to the movements of the crowds, but somehow the press of flesh always parted for Miljin: the rivers of folk would pause, an arm or two flicking out to hold the rest back; and then came a volley of salutes, the hands of all these strangers rising up to tap their breastbones respectfully as he passed before them. Even the towering cracklers stopped for him, bowing low enough that their chins nearly touched the caps of the people before them.
Miljin, however, took no notice. He just stumped on, yawning occasionally as he discussed the day’s tasks, indifferent to the stares and the salutes. “Almost all the poor bastards your master’s asked us to press today are in the Forward Engineering Quarters,” he said. “Closer to the walls. That’s where they prepare their materials and scaffoldry all year long. Shorter haul to the shore.”
“Exactly how close to the walls, sir?” I asked.
“Not as close as you’re likely worrying. Don’t fret. It’s a dull shithole of a place. Ugly as hell.” He yawned again. “Most of the people we’re to chat with are injured. Got hurt during the breach. Which means it’ll be easy to find them, I guess. Can’t run, or can’t run far. Did you get your immunities?”
“I did, sir,” I said. “I’ve also packed water, a set of knives, flint and steel, a cook kit, and several graft cures for any wounds, or stings or poisonings from any insects or vermin we encounter along the way.”
Miljin stopped, his eye falling upon the pack on my back. “Ahh…did you.”
“Yes, sir,” I said. “I…believe it’s the standard recommendation when entering the Plains of the Path?”
“That may be,” he said. “But we’re going to be sticking to the road. Which ain’t exactly teeming with wild dangers these days. Are you horse friendly, boy?”