Rona Aristan, it seemed, had visited four cantons within the third ring again and again: the Qabirga, Juldiz, Bekinis, and Mitral cantons. She must have traveled to each one at least once per year over the past nine years.
I grunted in surprise and summoned the map of the Empire in my mind. These four cantons were mostly plains country, devoted to growing grain and reagents behind the safety of the walls. What a Talagray Engineering secretary was doing traveling to such places was beyond me. But then, neither could I comprehend how she’d died, nor why she’d hidden seven thousand-talint coins in an empty house mere streets away from where she’d lived.
I set the wall pass down on the table, then reached back into the little leather bag and pulled out the final item within. I paused as I saw it, for this one was more familiar than the rest.
I held it up to the dim light: a small, bronze disc with a little glass vial set in the center, sloshing with black fluid.
A reagents key. Another one, a third one, after the two Miljin and I had found. But this key was far less ornate than the one the ten dead Engineers had possessed, and featured only one vial, suggesting it was intended for a much less protected portal.
I studied the three very different valuables placed on the floor before me: the reagents key, the wall pass, and the seven thousand talints.
“Hum,” I said aloud.
Not knowing what else to do, I opened up my engraver’s satchel and carefully placed them all inside, using a kerchief to cover the silver coins and prevent them from clinking and clanking. Then I buckled my satchel tight, exited and locked the door behind me, and slipped away into the drizzle, sprinting back to the Trinity as the final curfew bells began to ring.
CHAPTER 17
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WHEN I FINISHED MY report to Ana, I was slightly pleased when she just sat there on the edge of her bed, boggled. She opened her mouth to speak; then paused, rethinking her words; and then she did so again, and again, like she had so many questions for me she wasn’t able to get any one of them past her lips.
Finally, she managed to say, “Let me see one of those talints.”
I slipped out one of the huge silver coins and handed it over to her. She turned it about in her hands. “So…let me get this straight, Din,” she said. “You have…just been walking around the city…with seven thousand talints in your bag? Like they were cabbages for the cooking pot?”
“Ah…yes, ma’am?”
“By Sanctum,” she said. “And people think I’m fucking mad! And you didn’t slip an extra one in your boot or something, did you?”
“Ah…no, ma’am. That seems a good way to invite more hell into my life, when I already have hell aplenty.”
“How encouraging it is to see you show wisdom! But…but this has been nothing short of an utter vomit of revelations! Secret meetings! A missing survivor! Murdered secretaries making secret journeys across the Empire! And not only a sack containing a goddamn fortune, but three reagents keys discovered in one day?” She fumed for a moment. “Well. Well! I shall need to do some deep immersion to make sense of all this.”
She stood.
“Deep what now?” I asked.
“It’s been awhile since I was driven to such means,” she grumbled. She walked to one of her enormous trunks full of books, stooped, and began dumping them out by the armload. “But if any situation calls for it, it’s this one.” She did a double take, glaring at me. “Don’t just watch me toil here, boy. Help me!”
I did so, scooping out the books until the trunk was empty. It was one of Ana’s few personal possessions, a massive, battered old thing she’d insisted on bringing with her; though now that it was empty, I saw that the interior bottom was not made of wood, but appeared to be cushioned, almost like a bed for some animal.
“Shan’t be a moment,” said Ana. She slipped on her blindfold. “I just need to meditate on this for a bit before deciding the course of action. The solitude helps me ponder.” She climbed into the massive trunk and sat down. “You can wait here. Just don’t touch too much of my damned stuff. I will know what’s been moved!”
“But, ma’am,” I said. “What are you going t—”
She snapped the trunk door shut on herself. I stared at it, bewildered. Then came a soft thump from within, as if she was making herself comfortable, and all fell to silence.
I looked around, unsure what to do. The silence stretched on.
My eye fell on the sack of talints at my feet, and I reflected that now I really could just walk away with them, if I liked. Yet I decided that the odds of a solitary young criminal with a huge fortune on his person making it through a highly patrolled road that was often pestered with murderous deserters would either be slim to none or none at all. So instead of committing robbery, I made tea.