They were bones. Ribs.
The leviathan’s carcass was not buried in the hill. The leviathan’s carcass was the hill.
I felt my hands trembling as they gripped the reins of my horse, my eye fixed on the huge, mountainous growth, covered with those strange, shimmering trees.
“Their blood changes all that’s about them,” said Miljin quietly.
I turned, alarmed, and realized he’d ridden up beside me without my noticing. “P-pardon?” I asked.
“Their blood,” he says. “When it hits the soil, it makes the grass grow like mad. Makes trees and plants of all kinds sprout out everywhere. Some start bearing fruit that…does things to you, if you eat it. Usually the Apoths burn the carcasses. Can’t do that now. Not with the breach there. Too many people about, and too many fumes.”
I cast my eyes beyond the enormous, grass-covered body of the dead leviathan and spied the wide, rambling black strip of the sea wall in the distance—and there, straight east, a tiny gap, the barest break in the ribbon of stone. Only then did I realize how far the leviathan had rampaged, how much territory it had crossed, and how close it had come to destroying Talagray, which suddenly felt hardly larger than the carcass before me.
How odd it was to meet your maker in this fashion; for all the wonders of the Empire—from Sublimes like myself, to cracklers and fretvines and Miljin’s muscles—came from the blood of such beings.
Miljin wheeled his horse back west. “Come on. Sun’s getting low. Let’s get in before curfew.”
My eye lingered on the chitinous limb extending from the hillock. I noted the color of its armor—so gray, and so pale—and reflected that its color was not unlike that of my own skin. Then I turned and left.
* * *
—
MILJIN AND I parted ways at the Trinity in Talagray, though he held me back for a moment. “Here,” he said. “You deserve this, after today.” He pulled Vartas’s shootstraw pipe from his pocket, snapped it in half, and held one half out to me. “Find a hot iron somewhere and enjoy the smoke.”
I took it from him, sniffing its end. It was spicy and aromatic. “I will, sir.”
“I’ll report to Uhad. You grab some grub and get to your master. I’ve no doubt she’ll want to dig all throughout your head.” He eyed the darkening sky. “Night’ll be here soon, and with it the curfew. So stay indoors and stay safe.”
“Understood, sir.”
He walked out into the courtyard, then paused midstep as a light rain began to fall. He shot me a look over his shoulder. “A shit end to a shit day!” he barked, half grinning, and strode off.
I smiled after him. Then I waited, counting the seconds and watching as his form receded into the sheets of rain.
I counted out a full two minutes. Then I turned, walked across the Iudex tower entryway, and slipped out into a side street.
All about me the city was closing. Food vendors and inns were bawling out their last calls, the humid air heavy with the scents of fat and spice. Legion patrols roamed the streets, holding their lanterns high and pulling out their curfew bells. Soon tarrying in the street would carry serious penalties—yet I had some final business to conduct.
I summoned the map of Talagray in my memory as I ventured farther into the city. Rona Aristan of the Engineering Iyalet, Secretary Princeps to Commander Blas for going on twelve years. Her address was carved into my skull like it was wrought of molten lead. She lived on the western side of the city, close to the Trinity. And if I hurried, I could make it there and back before curfew.
CHAPTER 16
| | |
I FOUND ARISTAN’S NEIGHBORHOOD just as the rain receded, the stone streets bright and shining wetly as the last light of sunset drained from the sky. It wasn’t as fine as the gentry neighborhoods I’d glimpsed this morning, but it was nice enough, fretvine frames and white fernpaper walls. Aristan’s house was nestled in the back. I knocked on the door and waited.
Silence. I knocked again, got nothing. Then a third time. Still nothing.
I stepped back from the house and studied it again. All quiet and dark, no light within at all, not even a single mai-lantern. I read the mud in the yard about her house, but I could see no footprints. No one had trodden here at all during this wet day save myself.
I heard the first curfew bells echoing through the city, then scanned the landscape about me. I picked out a half-hidden area that would grant the widest view of the street and took up station there, my coat collar pulled high against the rain. When Aristan returned for curfew, I figured, I’d pounce.
I waited throughout the second warning bells, then the third. Studied the crowds trickling past and engraved their faces, their bearings, their clothes. I did not recognize them, and none came to Aristan’s door.
Finally the fourth bells rang. I studied Aristan’s house again, frowning. Wherever Commander Blas’s secretary was now, she was about to get herself locked up for violating curfew. As was I, probably.
If she was coming home, that was. Or maybe she was home but wouldn’t or couldn’t answer the door.
My eye lingered on her front door. An idea occurred to me—but a forbidden one. A disadvantage to being an engraver was you remembered every rule you ever heard, along with all the punishments for each violation. But I was bothered now and had to see.
I slipped around to the back of the house, knelt at the back door, and reached up into the sleeve of my coat. Sewn into the lining there were three small, slender lengths of iron I’d bent into different shapes. I hadn’t used them in months, but I slid them out now, then eyed the lock in the back door.
I did not really know how to pick locks. Rather, I had memorized the movements required to pick three specific locks I’d experimented with months ago, during my Sublime training. This was very different from knowing how locks actually worked, and how to pick them, but I hoped it was worth the gamble here. Perhaps the lock of this door was similar to the ones I’d worked with before.
I delicately slid my wrench into the lock, followed by the pin. I set my pin, then felt a fluttering in my eyes as I let the memories return to me, and the movements came alive in my fingers.
I turned the pin, then dipped the wrench up and down, the slightest wiggle. With a click, the lock turned.
I glanced around to confirm I was unwatched, and opened the door.
The stench of rot struck me in a thick, staggering wave. I stepped back, coughing with my arm to my nose, then took a deep breath of clear air and returned to the open door, peering inside.
The house within was a wreck. Cupboards all shoved open, their contents poured out onto the floor. Chairs and tables flipped upside down. Cushions slashed to pieces, their moss stuffing ripped out in clumps. Piles of paper lay everywhere, having been torn from many books. The only thing that hadn’t been dashed to pieces was the small spyglass set on a stand in the corner—a fancy possession for so modest a home.
Someone, it seemed, had come here looking for something. I wondered if they’d found it.
I looked back at the street, confirming I was unwatched. Then I stepped inside and shut the door behind me.
* * *
—
I MOVED CAREFULLY throughout the reeking house, studying all the refuse on the floor, shattered reagents vials or bowls of tinctures or shredded books. Finally I came to the bedroom, where the stench of rot was so intense I was nearly sick. Clothes had been hauled from the wardrobes and shredded to pieces. The whole of the room was like a stinking rat’s nest.
I looked to the mossbed in the corner. There on the floor, peeking just past the drape of the sheets, were the tips of two bare feet, the toes curled and discolored.