The axiom smiled and laughed, a high, cold sound. “You’re mad. She’s mad. This woman is absolutely mad!”
“What’s the square root of 21,316?” demanded Ana.
“Wh-what?” said the axiom, startled. “Why are you—”
“The answer is 146,” said Ana. “What’s 98 to the power of four?”
The axiom was silent.
“The answer is 92,236,816,” said Ana. “What about 92,236,816 divided by 21,316? Can you do that?”
Silence.
“Can you?” demanded Vashta. “Can you not?” She looked to Fayazi. “Why can she not?”
Fayazi began to shake but did not answer. The axiom’s cold, dead stare grew even colder.
“I think the answer is a little over 4,327,” said Ana. “But don’t quote me.” She grinned. “You bear the heralds of an axiom—but you can’t do math at all, can you? You needed a reason to hang about Fayazi while Din talked to her, to make sure she said the right things. And what gentrywoman goes anywhere without their Sublimes? You couldn’t pose as an engraver—she already had one of those—but axiom, well…Why would anyone pose complex math problems to Fayazi Haza? I wouldn’t have thought twice on it—but then Din asked a few very simple mathematical questions, and you said nothing. Nothing at all. And that was curious to me.” Her smile faded. “It’s you. You killed Aristan. And Suberek. And Nusis. It was all you.”
The axiom was silent. Ana began moving back, but she started speaking louder so the whole room could hear.
“The Hazas sent you here to clean up,” she said. “But the real mission was to get back that damn reagents key—the one filled with the cure for dappleglass. You learned from one of Kaygi’s many dirty sources that Nusis just happened to have a reagents key that had been recovered from Rona Aristan. You knew right away what it was. And with the leviathan approaching, there was no time. You got desperate. You went to her office, forced her to open the safe, and killed her—unaware that she and I had already swapped out the keys, and I had the real one in the chest in my rooms. Right upstairs, right now.”
I blinked at that, confused again. That couldn’t be so. Yet Ana kept talking.
“Very gutsy, to come here,” she said. “I wasn’t sure if you’d do it. I made sure not to ask for you at all, worried I might spook you. But you’re very loyal to the Haza clan. They told you to keep watch over their little sister, and that’s what you’re here to do.”
Fayazi was trembling now. Miljin stood and drew his sword.
I shot to my feet and did the same. The Legionnaires about us took that as a sign and drew their own blades.
The twitch’s cold, dark eyes flicked around the room, unnaturally quickly, counting us all.
“Fayazi?” said Ana. “You can move away now. Hurry, please.”
With a strangled cry, Fayazi Haza shot to her feet, shook off the twitch’s grip, and ran across the room. She pressed her back against the far wall and stared back at the twitch, sobbing hysterically.
Vashta looked on, stunned. Then she blinked and steeled herself. “Miljin?”
“Yes, ma’am?” said Miljin, his green blade raised.
“Arrest this person,” said Vashta. “Bind her hands and feet. Immediately.”
“Kol!” called Miljin. “Your engraver’s bonds!”
My hands shaking, I unhooked them from my belt, then tossed them to Miljin. He and the Legionnaires advanced on the twitch, blades held high. She stayed seated behind the table with her hands in her lap, totally still except for her eyes, which kept darting about, reading the room.
“There’s too many of us,” said Miljin to her. He handed the bonds off to a Legionnaire, keeping his own blade pointed at the twitch. “Too many, even for you.”
“I know,” said the twitch quietly. She raised her hands.
“Good,” said Miljin. He kept approaching, making sure his blade was angled toward her. “Keep raising them. Slowly now. Slowly. Slowly…”
I felt myself trembling. A fluttering to my eyes, and I recalled what Miljin had said: You meet a twitch, there’s no training I can offer that’d save you…They were supposed to be unbeatable in combat—for about a minute a day, mind. After that, their muscles wore out and they had to recover…
Then came the awareness of all the folk that this person had killed: Aristan, and Suberek, and poor Nusis…And perhaps Ana’s previous assistant as well, for all I knew.
“Slowly,” said Miljin. “Slowly give me your hands…”
The twitch extended her arms. Miljin nodded to the Legionnaire on his right, who took her by the arm and snapped one end of the bonds about her wrist.
Then they all froze.
A sound from out the window, out in the city, starting low and then slowly growing.
Bells. First dozens of them, then hundreds of them, their high, raucous peals falling over the countryside like a storm.
“Tocsins,” said Vashta hoarsely. “Tocsin bells. But we haven’t yet seen…”
We all looked to the window, and the east.
For a moment there was nothing but mottled clouds; but then a small, flittering green star rose in the distance; and it was joined by another and another, arcing into the darkness and leaving trails of smoke behind, until all the skies seemed swarming with bright, flickering green lights.
“Green flares,” Vashta said quietly. “A leviathan is here.”
The twitch moved.
CHAPTER 38
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I DID NOT REALLY see what the twitch did. The movement was so quick it was barely perceivable, like the flit of a moth’s wing in the shadows. But then there was a scream, and when I whirled to see, there was blood.
The Legionnaire on the twitch’s left was falling to the ground, blood pouring from her throat. The one on the twitch’s right suddenly gasped and coughed, a dark splotch spreading on his chest, and collapsed to his knees. Through the spray of blood I saw her, this dark figure with cold eyes, my engraver’s bonds swinging from one wrist and a long stiletto clutched in her hands, its blade so thin it seemed hardly more than a length of black hair. Where she had gotten her weapon from, I could not tell; she had moved too fast for me to see any of it.
Miljin brought his green blade down on the twitch, and the sword tore through the fretvine floor like it was made of straw. Yet the twitch was already gone, leaping away, her robes rippling as she moved like an acrobat. Then a flicker to her arms, and a third Legionnaire was collapsing, multiple perforations sprouting blood from her torso, like water from a decorative fountain. Fayazi’s engraver was shrieking wildly, diving for cover with his hands clapped to his ears.
The remaining Legionnaires darted after the twitch, trying to encircle her. I saw her pause, her dark eyes flicking about, counting the swords before her.
“Trap her!” bellowed Miljin. “Pin her in! Keep her from moving!”
The twitch looked to the window.
Another volley of green flares arose in the distance. The bells screamed on.
“Strike her down!” shouted Miljin. “Now, now!”
But the twitch bent low, sprinted for the window, darted about the Legionnaires, slid between two of them—and leapt out.
We all stared at the empty window, flummoxed.
“Where did she go?” cried Vashta. “Where in hell…”
Miljin and I ran to the window, peering out into the courtyard. Though the yard was flooding with figures bound up in Iudex blue, the twitch was nowhere to be seen.
“What in hell?” said Miljin. “She vanished?”
“No,” said Ana, standing slowly. “She did not run away, I believe. She went up, rather, climbing the tower.”
“Up?” said Vashta. “What the hell did she climb the tower for?”
“To get into my rooms,” said Ana. “The twitch is here for the reagents key, after all. I said just now that it was in my chest, in my rooms—but this was a lie. What the twitch will instead find there should be greatly surprising to her.”
“We must go up!” said Vashta. “We must go up and catch her!”