“Nothing suspicious,” she said, shrugging. “Not that I can recall.”
Her engraver twitched. “There was the fire, ma’am,” he said with a slight cough.
“A fire?” I said.
“Oh, that,” Fayazi said. She waved her pale hand again—her favorite gesture, apparently. “That seemed as nothing, to me.”
“We had blackwood burning in the fireplaces,” explained the engraver. “Laced with silverdust, so the fires burned silver and green. One popped and sent an ember onto the carpet.”
“And then?” I asked.
“It caused a flare,” said the engraver. “A very small fire. Smoke and a stir in the crowd. It is not uncommon. The madam and I attended to it ourselves, and it was quickly dealt with.”
“The greater damage was probably done,” said Fayazi, “by me showing up with porters and guards and starting everyone’s tongues a-wagging.”
“When was this?” I asked.
A flicker to the engraver’s eyes. “At two in the afternoon.”
“And did you account for the presence of all your guests after this?”
“It took time,” said Fayazi. “But yes.”
“How much time?”
“An hour, perhaps.” Her face changed as some thought struck her, a sudden sadness coursing through her eyes: real grief, real sorrow. “You…you think that’s when they did it, don’t you. That’s when they…they planted the poison.”
I studied the gleam of grief in her eyes, surprised by it. “How close were you and your father, ma’am?”
“Why?” she asked. “You don’t think I am the plotter behind this, do you?”
“I’m obliged by my role to ask about all relationships.”
She looked me over. “You are young. And altered recently. Probably for the pay, yes? Sending your dispensations home to your family, like so many Iyalet officers do?”
I did not answer.
“And yet,” she said, “you have a fell hand when it comes to battle. Two men I am told you killed, just hours ago, and grievously wounded others. Perhaps beyond the medikkers’ mending. Yes?”
Again, I did not answer. But I did not like how she knew such things so quickly. I wondered who in the Iyalets had talked.
“Well. You will likely find it all familiar, then.” She gazed out the window as the gentrylands rose around us. “Born into systems beyond our control, into relationships and organizations that obligate us to change, all so our families may prosper…That’s what the Empire is, isn’t it? You wear your colored cloak, and I the vestiges of my station, but we are both compelled to do things we can hardly comprehend.”
“Don’t say such things, ma’am,” whispered her axiom. “It is not as bad as all that.”
Fayazi shuddered, as if the woman’s words disturbed her. Yet then the emotion was swallowed in her face, and she became as cold and beautiful as polished silver once again.
“My father knew what the Empire was,” said Fayazi quietly. “He knew it very well.” Then she sat forward. “We are here.”
CHAPTER 27
| | |
WE EXITED THE CARRIAGE into the bright midday sun. Tall, pale trees lined the road and the hills, their white branches shivering as if listening to a secret. The grass below them was as dark as sable, and only when the rare blades of warm sunlight pierced the canopies and fell upon the tussocks did I see that the grass was a deep, dark green. The Haza lands stretched to the east and west about me, though this tapestry of bucolic beauty ended at a border of dark ribbon: the enclosure’s tall fretvine walls, penning us in.
I paused as I looked around, struck by the sight. It was the most beautiful place I’d seen in all the Empire. Even the breeze smelled sweeter here. It wasn’t until the guards helped Fayazi exit the carriage, and I caught a glimpse of her bone-white ankle, that I reflected that every blade of grass within this cloistered world might be as altered as its mistress.
“Is it to your liking, Signum?” asked Fayazi.
“It is wonderful, ma’am,” I said, and meant it. “How big are the grounds, if I may ask?”
I looked to her axiom, expecting her prompt calculations; but it was the engraver who answered. “It is twenty-three square leagues,” he said quickly, his eyes shivering in their sockets.
“And yet,” Fayazi said, “this land is worth but a fraction of our farmlands in the inner rings. A strange thing, no?”