“Of course, ma’am.”
“Particularly if you happen to actually find yourself in the presence of a member of the family! I think it quite unlikely—the Hazas remain very cloistered, especially here on the Outer Rim, where there is so much contagion—but if by chance you happen to meet one of them, I must insist you be polite, thoughtful, obedient, an—”
Then came a hard knock at the chamber door.
Vashta’s rage boiled over. “Damn it all!” she bellowed. “I said we were not to be disturbed! Who the hell is it?”
The door opened, and Strovi poked his head in. His boyish face looked anxious—but I could tell Vashta’s anger wasn’t the cause of it.
“Strovi?” shouted Vashta. “What in hell?”
“Th-there’s someone here to see you, ma’am,” he said.
“I told you, Captain, we were to be left alone!”
“I know, ma’am. But I knew you would wish to see this person, ma’am.”
“Then who is it? The damned emperor?”
“Ah, no. It is Fayazi Haza, ma’am.”
Vashta’s fury was wiped clean from her face. She gaped at Strovi, then at Ana, then stood.
There was an awful silence as she considered what to do.
“I see,” said Vashta. “Well. Let her in, then.”
He bowed and opened the door.
Then she walked in.
* * *
—
SHE LOOKED TO be about my age, and she was as tall as I was, with a long neck, enormous purple eyes, and thick, silvery, straight hair that fell in a shining sheet. Eyelids dashed with blue and purple, traceries of red paints about her ears. Lashes as thick as a stonetree’s trunk, her snow-white brow encircled by a gray ribbon threaded with pale green. Her pale skin was so unblemished and luminous it almost appeared to shine, cracks of ethereal white peeking through her robes, which covered nearly the whole of her being from the neck down—except her feet, which carefully shuffled forward on tall platform sandals.
She was without doubt the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. Not the most beautiful woman, nor the most beautiful person, but the most beautiful thing. She seemed to emit a silver shimmer simply walking through the adjudication chambers, followed by her retinue of servants and bodyguards, all armed and watchful—but for a while, at least, I had eyes only for her.
Then I noticed something: the point of her nose, the shape of her face…She was Sazi. Just like Ana, the only other Sazi person I’d ever met in my life.
I looked to Ana to confirm my suspicion. I saw that not only was I right, but Ana herself showed no reaction at all to the young woman’s arrival. Her expression had turned strangely inward, so much so it was hard to tell if she was even awake.
The young gentrywoman came to stand before Vashta, followed by two servants: both Sublimes, judging by the heralds they wore upon their breast, though they carried no imperial insignias with them. Having never met a privately employed Sublime, I found this remarkable. Her six bodyguards clanked along behind her, almost as tall as cracklers, bound up in complex plate armor that was nothing like what they used in the Legion—custom stuff, then, not refurbished or reused. Everything about them seemed expensive.
Fayazi Haza looked up at Vashta and gave a little bow, the barest inclination of her head. Vashta returned it—but reluctantly, I noted. A commander, after all, never enjoys a challenge to their authority.
“Madam Fayazi Haza,” said Vashta stiffly. “I am honored to have you before us. What brings you to the city proper?”
Fayazi’s amethyst-colored eyes fluttered, her giant lashes beating like a butterfly’s wing. When she spoke her words were soft, breathy, and strangely childlike.
“I am here,” she said, “with a terrible report.”
I glanced at Ana and Miljin, wondering if Fayazi was here to make some accusation against us. Miljin looked bewildered—but Ana did not. Her face had been drained of all emotion, and now she sat there, inscrutable and totally opaque behind her blindfold.
“What report might that be, madam?” asked Vashta.
“I am here,” said Fayazi, in tones most tragic, “to report a murder.”
I sat forward. Miljin and Vashta looked astonished. Ana continued to sit perfectly still.
“A…a murder?” said Vashta. “Of who?”
“The victim,” said Fayazi, “is my father. Who fell some thirteen days ago now.”
I sat so far forward I nearly fell off the seat. I had only the vaguest of ideas as to who this woman and her father were—but thirteen days ago would be eight nights before the breach: the same night the ten Engineers had been poisoned.
Vashta stared. “K…Kaygi Haza? Kaygi Haza is dead?”
Fayazi’s giant eyelashes fluttered, her brow suddenly creased with a ghost of grief. “We did not know,” she said, “that it was murder at the time. He fell to some kind of contagion. But as we have…as we have labored to understand it, I have come to believe that it was a poisoning. That it was murder. And thus, I now seek your aid in trying to find the killer.”
Vashta helplessly looked at Ana and Miljin. Miljin’s bafflement had only grown—but then there was a tremor of a muscle in Ana’s cheek.
Then I heard her scoff and mutter, ever so softly: “This smug little bitch. Here we fucking go.”
CHAPTER 25
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A SPEAR OF WHITE light stabbed down from the high windows, and she sat in a chair in the center of its cold spotlight. Her silver hair was gathered elegantly at her shoulders, her ivory fingers threaded in her lap. Knees and feet kept close together, the very picture of modesty and sorrow. Everything felt like a scene from some great painting: the pale fair maid, grieving at her father’s tomb.
“I would have come earlier, of course,” said Fayazi. Again, the fluttering of her enormous eyelashes. “But I had no concept that my father’s manner of death was malicious. It was not until just today, when a commander of the Apoths mentioned to me that several Engineers had perished from a similar affliction—and that it was indeed malicious, a murderous act—that I chose to reach out for aid.”
I glanced about. The edges of the chamber were cast in shadow, yet the armor of the guards along the walls glinted like the eyes of cats watching a campfire from the darkness. Fayazi’s two Sublimes sat on either side of her. The first, an engraver, was a man, short and pale and rather soft of features, with a coral-painted face and a high collar. Eyes alert and resentful, like a top student worried others might surpass his marks. The other, an axiom, was a woman, tall and rail-thin, with little dark eyes like needles, and a large, smooth brow that gave her face a skeletal suggestion. She moved not at all as Fayazi spoke, but her unblinking gaze shifted about the room, and frequently rested on Ana and me.
“Please describe the manner of his death,” said Ana sharply.
Fayazi’s amethyst stare floated over to her. There was a twitch at the edge of her tiny mouth—a smirk. Perhaps a sneer.
“I am familiar with the commander-prificto,” Fayazi said. “But you, I am afraid, I do not ken.”
“This is Immunis Ana Dolabra of the Iudex,” said Vashta. “She is commanding the investigation of some recent murders here in Talagray.”
“Mm,” said Fayazi softly. “This name I know…But I cannot place it yet. No matter.”
A cold, mirthless smile crossed Ana’s face, then vanished.
“My father…” A tragic pucker to Fayazi’s lips. “My father perished from a plantlike growth. It was most strange. It poured out from his body, penetrating him through the breast. We treated it like contagion and locked down the whole of our halls in containment immediately to try to study it. We are often hermetic here in the Outer Rim, you see—the fear of contagion is greatest near the lands where the leviathans fall. Yet we could find nothing, and no one within our halls suffered any more afflictions. It was most mysterious.”
“And you did not report this to the Apoths?” said Ana.