“At the very least,” said Ana wearily, “it means we now have to get Commander-Prificto Vashta directly involved.”
Everyone looked shocked, myself included. We had not yet encountered something grave enough to call her in from her duties as seneschal of the canton.
“Why?” said Uhad.
“Because as I said, you are witnesses!” said Ana. “You cannot investigate yourselves! Nor can you question yourselves! Especially not if you all are seen to be in pretty good relations with the owners of the house where these people were originally poisoned!” She looked over her shoulder. “Miljin!”
“Yes, ma’am?” he said.
“Go with young Strovi here to tell Vashta we have urgent news. We will need her input to decide how to move further. Move quickly now! We must form a plan of action as fast as we can.”
CHAPTER 24
| | |
COMMANDER-PRIFICTO VASHTA SAT IN her chair at the front of the Iudex adjudication chamber, her gray-peppered hair twinkling in the lamplight. I hadn’t seen her since that first night in Daretana, but she looked much as I’d remembered: tall, serious, austere, draped in Legion black, watching us keenly like a scribe-hawk studying a mouse.
But then Ana talked. And talked. And as she did, Vashta seemed to age before my very eyes, so much that her back grew bent and her face appeared to blossom with lines.
Finally Ana finished. A silence stretched on.
“I see,” said Vashta softly. “Thank you for your report, Immunis.”
No one spoke. The commander-prificto simply sat in her chair, blinking as she tried to process all this.
“This…” Vashta’s eyes searched the seats, then stared out the windows, as if hoping to find someone who could help. “This…this is nothing short,” she proclaimed, “of a fucking disaster.”
Her words echoed off the fretvine walls and the wood-paneled seats while Ana, Miljin, and I looked on. This chamber was where the Iudex of the canton determined the sentences of its criminals; and though we had done no wrong, I couldn’t help but feel that all three of us were about to be punished.
“Four quakes,” said Vashta drearily. “Four quakes we’ve recorded recently, all over the past week. Do you understand what this indicates? A leviathan approaches. It churns its way now through the mud and soil of the sea deeps. It shall attack in the next seven days, perhaps less.”
“Dreadful.” Ana’s head bobbed up and down like a claydove walking about a town square. “Awful.”
“To survive the wet season,” said Vashta, “we need the Engineers to be functional. We need Talagray to be functional. We need all the complex little behaviors it takes to maintain the walls and the bombards and the Legion to keep on whirring and clunking along. And yet…and yet, you tell me now that not only are we no closer to identifying who killed those ten Engineers, but that almost the entire investigation team is now compromised. Because, the poisoning likely took place in a home of one of the most powerful clans in all the Empire! Right as all my investigators were apparently sipping their sotwine nearby!” A horrified pause. “I mean, I…I thought you were tracking the Engineers to some secret meetings, Dolabra, or some such devilry?”
“We were, ma’am,” said Ana.
“But now you think the Engineers were having these secret meetings at the halls of the Hazas? At their gentry estate? And this last secret meeting occurred during some sort of party?”
“That is as it seems, ma’am,” said Ana. “The dead Engineers possessed reagents keys to the Haza gates. I think they were there that day of the Haza party, and that that is where they were poisoned. But how and why, I’m not sure.”
The muscles in Vashta’s jaw rippled as she gritted her teeth. “Miljin—I feel stupid asking this, but you can testify that you at least weren’t there, correct?”
“Wasn’t there, ma’am,” Miljin said. “Don’t get invited to fancy gentry parties. P’rhaps on account I lost my dancing shoes.”
“That’s a damned blessing, then. You are permitted to keep working this, then.” Vashta’s hands crawled along the surface of her engraved helm in her lap. “Sen sez imperiya,” she muttered. “The workings of the Empire must be honest and straightforward. For if the Empire does not work for one, it does not work for all—and then it cannot work to keep the leviathans back.” She glared at Ana. “Well. You’ve done a very good job here, Immunis!”
The bobbing of Ana’s head increased. “Thank you, ma’am.”
“You have not only identified the likely time and location of the crime—again, all within a few days—but you have managed to utterly unravel any faith I had in the Iyalets in this canton,” she said bitterly. “Quite stunning work! As such, I am hoping you can continue to do stunning work.”
Ana’s fingers flittered in her dress. She knew what was coming. “Of course, ma’am,” she said.
“You shall take over as lead investigator,” said Vashta. “You must begin by questioning Uhad, Nusis, and Kalista immediately. We must get all their testimony right away.”
“Certainly,” said Ana.
“Good. And there’s nothing else you haven’t told me yet, is there?” asked Vashta. “You don’t have some other magic reagents key that might open…hell, I don’t know, the emperor’s undergarment drawer?”
There was an awkward silence. I glanced back at Miljin, who looked on, uncomprehending.
“Well…” said Ana.
“You don’t,” Vashta said flatly.
“I’m afraid we do, ma’am,” said Ana. “We have found a second key.”
“I was joking!” cried Vashta. “I’ll joke no more, if the gods shall hear them as wishes and make them true! Where did you find it?”
Ana then explained all I’d found in Rona Aristan’s safehouse. Vashta grew more and more agog with every word, and Miljin looked first outraged and then resigned to hear that we’d all got to it first.
“I always did hear,” he muttered as he shook his head, “that working with Dolabra will drive a man mad…”
“Do we have any idea how Blas came into all that money?” demanded Vashta. “And how does that relate to his murder, and the murder of all the other Engineers?”
“We don’t yet know, ma’am.”
“And you’re certain this malign influence doesn’t spread to any of the other investigators?”
“At the moment, all their involvement seems ill-advised but coincidental, ma’am.”
“And what in hell does this new reagents key open?”
“We don’t yet know that either, ma’am,” said Ana. “It appears far plainer than the Haza key, so I doubt if it shall open anything quite so controversial, but…we have given it to Nusis to analyze. I have not yet heard if she has had time to work on it.”
Again, Vashta glowered at us. “Get an update from her when you interrogate her next. We must uncover as much as we can about all of this as quickly as possible.”
“Understood, ma’am,” said Ana. “But…first, of course…”
“The Hazas,” sighed the commander-prificto. “You would like to go to their home, I assume.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And inspect the residence.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And get lists of all their guests and relations present.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And, surely, talk to all their servants and advisers. Like they were simple country folk.”
“That would be most preferable, ma’am.”
I almost scoffed. Ana could be quite unctuous when attempting humility.
“I have fought back leviathans for five wet seasons,” said Vashta quietly. “But at least the titans are straightforward. Yet the gentry…That is another matter.” She fixed Ana again in a cold, steely gaze. “I will do what I can. But I wish you to know this.”
“Yes, ma’am?”
“I am seneschal—but only of this canton. The Hazas own some of the most verdant, potent lands in all the Empire, in many cantons. Without the reagents grown on their properties, defense of the Empire would be impossible. We would have no grafts for stonewood, for slothiks, for cracklers. For healing grafts, for mending pastes, for any of it. Hell, a full twenty percent of all our fretvine grafts come from the Haza lands! So I will consent to this—but you must, and I mean must, step carefully.”