“Probably looks a mess,” said Ana. “The trick is to look for which bit of writing is clearest. That will be the most recent one. The last thing Suberek ever wrote in his life, probably…And I hope that will tell us where he delivered his order.”
I was utterly useless here—normal writing shivered horribly to my eyes, and this was even less clear—but Miljin, Uhad, Nusis, and Kalista crouched over the paper, studying it like it was some holy text, until Nusis, whose eyes were best, pointed to one corner.
“Here…” she said quietly. “This looks promising. A good bit of writing, running over all the others…Very hard, and very clear. Like what they were writing mattered.”
Miljin squinted at it. “Yeah…not an address. It almost looks like directions.”
“Yes.” Nusis held the lantern close. “North on Ekipti…” she read aloud. “Then this next bit I can’t read at all…But then here. West on Petros. Then a right, and a right…And then it seems to stop.”
I summoned the map of Talagray in my mind, and found the street quickly. “It’s directing us to a long road running north and south on the west end of the city,” I said. “It had no names on any maps I’ve seen. But that must have been where Suberek brought his last shipment.”
Uhad turned away, his expression deeply troubled. “I know this road,” he said quietly. “That is where the gentryfolk reside.”
“And Din,” said Ana, “has a very expensive reagents key.” She looked at me—not a grin, but a small, clever smirk. “Perhaps he and Miljin ought to go to this street and see which door it opens?”
* * *
—
MILJIN AND I trooped off into the streets, rejoined by Strovi, for it was still dark and we needed his privileges to pass. We strode on, following the directions I had engraved in my memory, leaving the fortifications of the east and the fretvine towers behind, and approaching the gentle, rising hills in the west, where the city sprawled out.
“Gentryfolk…” Miljin shook his head. “Of all the people to be caught up in this, this puts bad water in my belly.”
“Why’s that, sir?” I asked.
“You probably don’t see too many of their ilk in Daretana,” he said. “But gentryfolk wield enormous powers in the Empire. You own a lot of farmland, you get a lot of say with the people who matter.” He glanced at Strovi. “Though the captain here knows this better than I, surely.”
Strovi said nothing. I gave Miljin a quizzical look.
“Strovi comes from a gentry family,” Miljin confided to me. “Very important folk in the west of the Tala canton, y’see.”
I turned to Strovi, surprised. He glanced at me sidelong—I noticed he wasn’t smiling as he so often did. “I am Legion first and foremost, Miljin,” he said stiffly. “Just as you were. And I am proud of it.”
“True.” Miljin bowed to him theatrically. “Your record and bravery are beyond reproach. But that is why you’ve no great augmentations—yes, Captain?”
Strovi’s face colored slightly. “Miljin…”
“Too many augmentations makes it damned hard to engender children,” said Miljin to me, offhandedly. “And the Strovi clan has every intention of extending their line, of course.”
“Damn it, Miljin,” snapped Strovi. “Mind your own affairs!”
I cleared my throat. “Perhaps,” I said, “it’d be better if we focused on the case at hand…”
Miljin snorted and gazed at the hills before us. “The case, yes…Though I grow pessimistic. If the gentry is tangled up in this, Kol, things shall get tricky fast.”
Dawn bloomed in the east, and I began to see what he meant: atop the hills before us were many enormous, fine houses, gabled and bedecked with mai-lanterns and encircled by high fretvine walls. Many featured tall bird-perch gates before the houses—ceremonial, double-beamed structures wrought of wood and painted bright red. I had heard of them before, and was aware they indicated gentryhood, and the emperor’s favor. They were so closely entwined with the gentry that the symbol of them was often painted on gentry contracts: two perpendicular lines with two sloping, arched lines running between them. I was frankly awed by the sight of them, and the grand houses behind them.
Miljin spat on the ground. “You can smell the money in the air here. Blow your nose and talints shall come tumbling out.”