I studied the mold and sniffed the lye vial again, ensuring that this sight was easily recallable. Then I looked at the body again, this half person frozen in an agonized scream. A drop of water fell from the hole in the ceiling and landed in the lip of his boot, sending a tiny fan of pooled blood dribbling down the leather. The lake of gore on the wooden floor widened by a shred of a smallspan.
A twist in my stomach. I stood and looked at the burnished bronze mirror. Then I froze, staring at the face looking back at me.
A very young man’s face, with a thick shock of black hair, dark, worried eyes, and the slightly gray skin of someone who’d undergone significant suffusions and alterations. I studied the face’s delicate chin and long nose. Pretty features—not masculine, nor rugged, nor handsome, but pretty, and how awkward they looked on a person so large.
Not the face of an Iudex Assistant Investigator. Not someone who was supposed to be here at all. A boy playing dress-up at best, aping authorities he could never hope to command.
And what would happen to this young man if anyone found out how he’d actually gotten this position?
My stomach twisted, twirled, danced. I dashed to the bathing closet window, burst through it, and sent a spray of vomit pattering down to the grass below.
A voice said, “Fucking hell!”
Gasping, I looked down. Two Apoth officers were staring up at me from the gardens, shocked looks on their faces.
“Ahh…” one said.
“Shit,” I spat. I stumbled back in and shut the window behind me.
* * *
—
NOT HAVING A handkerchief, I wiped my mouth on the inside of my coat. I sniffed and swallowed three, four, five times, trying to suck the rancid taste and aroma back inside me, bottling it up. Then I stepped carefully around the puddle of blood, went to the bedroom door, and opened it to leave—but then I paused.
Otirios’s voice floated down the hall, chatting with another Apoth guard.
“…stuffy little prick, barely out of puberty,” he was saying. “Think I’ve heard of him, from the other Sublimes. Supposed to be the dumbest one of the lot, nearly failed out a hundred times. I’m surprised to find him working for the investigat—”
I walked forward, fast. “Princeps,” I said.
Otirios stumbled to attention as I strode around the corner. “Ah—y-yes, sir?”
“I’m going to review the house and the grounds before I speak to the witnesses,” I said. “While I do that, please place the witnesses in separate rooms and then watch them, to ensure they don’t talk among themselves. I’d also like your other guards to make sure the exits and entrances are covered—just in case there’s an unaccounted reagents key and someone tries to slip in or out.”
Otirios blanched, clearly displeased at the idea of managing so many people for so long. He opened his mouth to argue, then grudgingly shut it.
“And Princeps…” I looked at him and smiled. “I do appreciate all your support.”
I was still smiling as I walked out. I had never given such an order before, but I’d enjoyed that one. For while I couldn’t really rebuke Otirios—he was part of another Iyalet, a different imperial administration—I could stick him with a shit job and leave him there for a long while.
I walked throughout the mansion, occasionally sniffing my vial as I studied each hallway, each room, the insignia of the Haza clan always hanging over my shoulder at the door—the feather between the trees.
The Hazas were able to afford a kirpis shroom for every major room, it seemed, but the one in the western end by the kitchens was shriveled and dying. Curious. I made a note of it, then kept moving, checking all the windows and doors—mostly fernpaper, I noticed. All milled bright white, and each probably worth more than a month’s pay for me.
I crossed through the kitchens, then spied something below the stove: a tiny blot of blood. I touched it with a finger. Still wet, still dark. There might be many reasons for blood to be in a kitchen, of course, but I engraved it in my memory. Then I went outside.
The gardens were very pretty and elaborate: landscaped streams crisscrossing the grounds, little bridges arching over them in picturesque places. A sight from a spirit story for children, perhaps; yet I didn’t find anything of interest as I wandered the paths, nodding occasionally at the Apoths still searching for contagion.
I came to the place where I’d vomited out the window and searched the grass for any indentions or marks of a ladder or something similar. Nothing there, either.