I nodded. Then he sprinted away into the streets.
CHAPTER 21
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THE LEGION PATROL CAME to deal with the deserters, and I left the scene in the stables and wandered into the mill, the smell of rot all about me. It was a cavernous, dark place, with bundles of fernpaper drooping in great clumps along the posts. Weak starlight dribbled through a high window, and the skeletons of machinery crouched in the corners. It felt like I was in a tomb, but I was so stunned I didn’t care. I slumped into a chair in the dark and just sat, listening to the mutterings and calls of the soldiers outside.
My eyes fluttered, shook. I remembered the spray of blood on my face, the saline taste in my mouth. The way that one man’s mouth had worked stupidly in the lamplight, his eyes so confused and hurt. Every part of my body was sticky and crackling with drying blood. It was best to not move at all.
Strovi returned, his mai-lantern held high. He glanced about the room and set the lantern on the table, his sweat-gleamed face a smear of light in the dark.
“Did you see a way down, Kol?” he asked.
“A way down?” I said weakly.
“Down into the basement. You haven’t looked about?”
I shook my head.
He stared off into the darkness. “I talked to them. They said there was something there, when they broke in,” he said. “The deserters thought this place abandoned and broke in through a window. But then they went to the basement, and…” He swallowed. “I’ve sent word to the Iudex. The whole investigation team should be here soon—Uhad and all. For now…” He wiped his face with a trembling hand. “I think you should engrave the room. Look at it like your immunis might want you to. Yes?”
I stared ahead. I could hear his words but could not comprehend them.
“Din?” he said. “Din!”
“What?” I said quietly.
“You need to get up and look!” he snapped. “This is a death scene! Get up and…Oh, damn it all…”
He grabbed me by the front of my shirt and hauled me to my feet. Then he looked into my face, his gaze compassionate yet desperate, and pulled a handkerchief from his pocket.
“That was your first fight, wasn’t it?” he said.
I said nothing. Answering such questions seemed pointless.
“By hell, you’re a mess.” He gently wiped my face of blood, using the cloth to swab my eyes, my nose, my mouth. Then he sighed and said, “Your sword.”
“My what?”
“The sword. You need to clean it. It won’t do to sheathe it bloody. It’s dishonorable.”
I looked down and saw the sword still clutched in my bloodied hand. I’d had no idea I still held the thing. I watched as he gingerly took me by the wrist, pulled the sword free from my hand, and wiped down the blade with his bloody handkerchief.
“There,” he said. “Not perfect, but…It’ll do.”
I stuck it in my sheath, yet it did not fit: the sheath was too short, leaving at least four smallspan of blade exposed.
“Is…is that not your sword, Din?” he asked.
“Had a wooden sword,” I said. “Lost it in the fight.”
“You what?”
“I haven’t graduated yet, you see, sir. Still an apprentice.”
We both stared at the sword sticking out of the scabbard. Then he burst out laughing.
“By Sanctum!” he cried. “What a thing, what a thing!”
Despite everything, I smiled.
* * *
—
STROVI LEFT ME again to go deal with the bodies, and once I got ahold of myself I studied the mill. It was a strange, complex place, with vats and presses and belts and all sorts of machineries, all for the purpose of boiling, starching, and pressing bundles of parchferns until they formed the panels so used in this region of the Empire. Though I knew all this, I had no idea how such a place might actually function.
But I knew what we had come here for: we wished to find out who had placed such a large order of fernpaper just after the night when all the Engineers had likely been poisoned—as well as what had happened to this Suberek who supposedly lived here.
I glanced at a darkened hallway at the end of the room. The stench of rot was very strong there, and blackflies crawled upon the ceiling and walls.
“I’ll do you last,” I whispered to the dark.
I dug through the counters and cabinets looking for documents or papers, anywhere this Suberek might have written down an order, a name, or an address of a place. I found nothing but tools and materials for millery. Besides this, the machines, and the giant, scarred old worktable in the center of the room, there was nothing.