“You’re asking about contagion,” said Topirak. “Aren’t you, sir?”
“What makes you say that?” I asked, perhaps too sharply.
“I’m a medikker, sir. I know the questions. Want to figure out where they’ve been, what they touched, where they got it. Is that the case, sir?”
“Somewhat.”
“I thought Misik had died in the collapse. When the walls fell. Why…why ask about contagion? And why’s the Iudex investigating a contagion, and not the Apoths?”
“We’re just trying to understand more. Is there anything you can think of along those lines, Princeps?”
“N-no,” she said. “When Misik wasn’t at her duties, she was with me.” The weak smile again. “That’s as I liked it.”
She looked to me for sympathy. But I could feel something amiss now, and didn’t give her any.
A drip as Topirak shifted in her bath. Her eyes searched the ceiling, anxious and fretful. She opened her mouth to speak, then stopped. I waited for it to come.
“Did Misik…do something wrong, sir?” she asked.
There it was.
“I don’t know,” I said honestly. “Do you think Jilki did something wrong?”
“No,” she said. She stared up at the ceiling again, her pupils darting about. “But on the eighth night before the breach…”
“Yes?” I said. “What happened then?”
She swallowed. Tears meandered down her cheeks to drop into the white bath. “She…she went back into town, to Talagray. She stayed the night there.”
“What for?” I asked.
“She was…working on some kind of project. Something to do with the quakes. The walls had been destabilized. She…she went back to town for a meeting. Couldn’t tell me what it was about. Wasn’t allowed, she said.”
“Why not?” I asked.
“Something about not wanting to start a panic, sir,” she said. “Didn’t want people to know how bad the walls were. It felt very secret.”
“I see,” I said. I let the silence linger, then asked, “Did you believe her?”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
I gazed into her face. Eyes wide and fearful, jaw trembling.
“I’m here to prevent other deaths, Princeps,” I said. “Other injuries like yours. If something’s wrong, I need to know.”
“It was just…just a feeling,” she whispered. “When she went to Talagray for these meetings, she was always quiet after. And there was something she said, both times.” She screwed up her face, and said, “The Engineers make the world. Everyone else just lives in it.”
“This wasn’t the first time she went to Talagray for such a meeting?” I asked.
“No. She’d gone once two months before, sir.”
“And any time before that?” I asked.
She thought about it, then shook her head.
“When was this previous meeting?” I asked. “The exact date.”
“The seventh of the month of Egin, I think.”
“And this…this feeling you got, after she returned from these meetings. Can you tell me a little more about it?”
She stared into the milky waters before her. “I was worried she had met someone else,” she said finally. “And there was a smell about her, each time. She’d washed, I could tell, but…but it’s hard to hide things like that from me. Oranje-leaf, and bitters. Like the sotwine they make in the cold countries. It was strange. Strange enough to make me think she was seeing someone else. But I wasn’t sure, so…so I didn’t want to ask. I just wanted to keep her.”
“I see,” I said.
She looked at me pleadingly. “Did she, sir? Do you know? Do you know if she’d been with someone else, sir?”
“I don’t. But I have to keep looking. Would you like me to tell you what I find out, Princeps?”
She thought about it, the dark, bruised side of her face bent to the waters. Then she shook her head. “No. I’ve lost enough. I want to keep the last few days I had with her, at least. I want those to stay mine.” A miserable laugh. “I mean—I’m owed that, at least, aren’t I?”
CHAPTER 14
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I CONDUCTED FOUR OTHER interviews after Topirak. All of the people were exhausted and grieving and injured—one man concussed, one woman missing a foot, another with her head and face all bandaged up—and none wished to talk to me. Yet I stayed with them, stalking among the bandages and baths; and as I sniffed my ash-scented vial and pulled words from their battered minds, a pattern began to emerge among the dead Engineers.