My stomach twisted, twirled, danced. I dashed to the bathing closet window, burst through it, and sent a spray of vomit pattering down to the grass below.
A voice said, “Fucking hell!”
Gasping, I looked down. Two Apoth officers were staring up at me from the gardens, shocked looks on their faces.
“Ahh…” one said.
“Shit,” I spat. I stumbled back in and shut the window behind me.
* * *
—
NOT HAVING A handkerchief, I wiped my mouth on the inside of my coat. I sniffed and swallowed three, four, five times, trying to suck the rancid taste and aroma back inside me, bottling it up. Then I stepped carefully around the puddle of blood, went to the bedroom door, and opened it to leave—but then I paused.
Otirios’s voice floated down the hall, chatting with another Apoth guard.
“…stuffy little prick, barely out of puberty,” he was saying. “Think I’ve heard of him, from the other Sublimes. Supposed to be the dumbest one of the lot, nearly failed out a hundred times. I’m surprised to find him working for the investigat—”
I walked forward, fast. “Princeps,” I said.
Otirios stumbled to attention as I strode around the corner. “Ah—y-yes, sir?”
“I’m going to review the house and the grounds before I speak to the witnesses,” I said. “While I do that, please place the witnesses in separate rooms and then watch them, to ensure they don’t talk among themselves. I’d also like your other guards to make sure the exits and entrances are covered—just in case there’s an unaccounted reagents key and someone tries to slip in or out.”
Otirios blanched, clearly displeased at the idea of managing so many people for so long. He opened his mouth to argue, then grudgingly shut it.
“And Princeps…” I looked at him and smiled. “I do appreciate all your support.”
I was still smiling as I walked out. I had never given such an order before, but I’d enjoyed that one. For while I couldn’t really rebuke Otirios—he was part of another Iyalet, a different imperial administration—I could stick him with a shit job and leave him there for a long while.
I walked throughout the mansion, occasionally sniffing my vial as I studied each hallway, each room, the insignia of the Haza clan always hanging over my shoulder at the door—the feather between the trees.
The Hazas were able to afford a kirpis shroom for every major room, it seemed, but the one in the western end by the kitchens was shriveled and dying. Curious. I made a note of it, then kept moving, checking all the windows and doors—mostly fernpaper, I noticed. All milled bright white, and each probably worth more than a month’s pay for me.
I crossed through the kitchens, then spied something below the stove: a tiny blot of blood. I touched it with a finger. Still wet, still dark. There might be many reasons for blood to be in a kitchen, of course, but I engraved it in my memory. Then I went outside.
The gardens were very pretty and elaborate: landscaped streams crisscrossing the grounds, little bridges arching over them in picturesque places. A sight from a spirit story for children, perhaps; yet I didn’t find anything of interest as I wandered the paths, nodding occasionally at the Apoths still searching for contagion.
I came to the place where I’d vomited out the window and searched the grass for any indentions or marks of a ladder or something similar. Nothing there, either.
The last thing to look at was the groundskeeper’s hut. It was a quaint place, made of thin fernpaper walls, the shelves dotted with tiny plants the groundskeeper was apparently nursing along. Lines of merry little blooms, some fresh, some wilting. There was also a clay oven, quite large. I peered inside and noticed the ash in the bottom, then touched the brick there and found it was still slightly warm, like coals had been smoldering overnight.
I made another trip about the grounds to confirm I’d seen all there was to see. Then I glanced around, confirmed I was alone, and slid the commander’s book from my pocket.
I opened it, squinted at the shivering, dancing words on the page, and began to read aloud.
“Wall s-segment…3C,” I mumbled. “Check d-date the fourth of Egin…two t-tons sand, two tons loam…”
I read on and on, stuttering through the tiny script, and listened to my voice as I read. I had great trouble reading and memorizing text, but if I read it aloud, and listened to my own words, I could remember them as I could everything else I heard.
I read it all aloud as fast as I could. It was mostly a record of the commander’s movements as he did his inspections, with entries like ck. Paytas?z bridges in the north of the Tala canton—6th to 8th of Egin—all pass, and so on. He’d apparently been very busy just over four weeks ago, during the month of Egin. I had no idea if any of it was pertinent or not, but as an engraver, I was to engrave everything in my memory.
I finished engraving the book, then began crossing the many bridges to return to the house. I had not interviewed anyone as a death witness before, especially not the staff of the house of a gentry family. I wondered how to begin.
I caught a flash of my reflection in the water below, dappled and rippling, and paused. “Let’s not fuck this up, yes?” I said to my watery face.
I crossed the last little bridge and entered the house.
* * *
—
I PRESSED THE servant girls first, being as they’d had access to Blas’s rooms. I started with the girl who’d been crying so hysterically—a little thing, narrow shoulders, tiny wrists. Small enough to make one wonder how she made it down the hall with all those dishes. It’d been she who’d responded to Blas when he’d started calling for help at eight o’clock, she told me, just before breakfast.
“He called for help?” I asked.
She nodded. A tear wove down her cheek to balance precariously in the crevice above her nostril. “He said he…his chest hurt. Said it was hard to breathe. He was coming down for breakfast, and he stopped and went back to his room. I came to him, tried to get him to lie down before…before he…”
She bowed her head; the balanced tear spilled down her lip; then she started wailing again. “I’m suh-sorry,” she sobbed as she tried to regain her composure. “Sh-should have asked…W-Would the suh-sir care for some t-tea?”
“Ah…No, thank you,” I said.
For some reason, this made her sob all the harder. I waited for her to stop. When she didn't, I let her go.
I moved on to the next one, an older servant named Ephinas. She sat down slowly, her movements cautious, controlled. Someone used to being watched, probably. She corroborated the first servant’s story: Blas arrived late in the evening, bathed, went to bed; and all had seemed completely normal until he started screaming for help in the morning. She had not gone to him, so she didn’t know more than that—but she did come alive when I asked if Blas had stayed here before.
“Yes,” she said. “My masters let him stay here often. He is close with them.”
“How was this stay different from other stays?” I asked. “Or was it different?”
Hesitation. “It was,” she said.
“Then how so?”
More hesitation. “He left us alone this time,” she said quietly. “Probably because he never got the chance to try.”
I coughed, snuffed at my vial, and hoped she could not see me blush. “Tell me more about that, please,” I asked.
She did so. From the sound of it, Blas was quite the absolute bastard, pawing at the servants the second he had them alone. She said she wasn’t sure if his advances had been reciprocated by any of the other girls, but she didn’t think so, though all of them got the same treatment.
“What was the nature of his visit here?” I asked her.
Her eyes dipped down. “He was a friend of the Haza family,” she said.
“He’s a friend? That’s the only reason why he stayed here?”
“Yes.”
“Isn’t it strange for someone to stay at someone else’s house while they’re not here?”
This elicited a contemptuous glance. Her eye lingered on my cheap boots and ill-fitting coat. “It is not uncommon for gentryfolk.”