“But…but your abilities, the way you…”
“My situation,” she continued, “made me amenable to an…experiment.” She was silent for a bit, as if debating something, before finally saying, “An alteration. The nature of which should not bother you—for you would not be able to comprehend it. But if I hadn’t been the person that I was, then the alterations would not have been a success. It was my choice. I changed and became. I self-assembled. Just as you have done.” She leaned forward. “Sen sez imperiya. The Empire is strong because it recognizes the value in all our people. Including you, Dinios Kol. And when the Empire is weak, it is often because a powerful few have denied us the abundance of our people. That is exactly what has happened in Talagray. And I was assigned here specifically to amend that—and I mean to do so.”
I leaned against the rampart, stunned. None of what she’d said had been a compliment, exactly, yet I struggled with emotion. I had never had anyone understand me for what I was and accept me—nor tell me that the Empire itself desired my services even so.
But then I realized the last thing she’d said.
“Wait,” I said. “Assigned to be here? What? By who—”
Then another rumbling shook the earth, followed by a sharp crackle of bombard fire. A queer, horrid breeze swept over the landscape, and the fretvine towers of all the city creaked in a chorus.
“The time comes,” said Ana. “Look! Look now, Din! Let us see if we shall survive the day!”
I put the spyglass to my eye and looked.
* * *
—
I SAW THE walls again, and the ragged gap of the breach.
I could see the sea beyond, I thought, the tides frothy and faint, the clouds above them soft and roiling; yet then something eclipsed it all, a shadow moving down from the north to block the gap, lumbering to fill the space between the walls.
The air there trembled, like a horrid fume caused the atmosphere to quake. It was difficult to see, but I thought I could make out…
Something. A form.
I stared, and stared, and stared.
It was far wider than it was tall, like a vast, plated, dripping dome, its surface gray and gleaming, and puckered here and there with growths and barnacles from deep-sea creatures that had made their home upon this colossus. The thing moved slowly, its uncountable legs picking their way across the coast in a fretful, nervous dance; yet as it moved I became aware that I was only seeing part of it through the gap, just the tiniest fraction of the vast, shambling beast emerging from the shores.
My skin began to crawl, unable to comprehend what I beheld. It was like looking up on an overcast day and seeing a gap in the clouds; and then watching, dumbfounded, as an eye peered through the hole, staring down at you.
Slowly, the leviathan came to the breach. Through the quaking air I spied some growth emerging from behind the broken walls, hanging from the bottom of the dome; and within this pendulous mass I thought I saw a pair of pale, luminous eyes shining in the fumes, and below them an open maw working stupidly, mindlessly, its dark lips trembling and convulsing as if trying to speak.
I started screaming then, the spyglass stuck to my eye, shrieking words as I tried to describe to Ana what I was witnessing. I was cut short as the horizon lit up with bombard fire, hundreds upon hundreds of artillery firing on the thing at once, and all was concealed with smoke; yet then at the very end of the volley came an immense, earth-shattering crack, a cannonry of a kind I had never heard before and could never imagine; and then a detonation, low and rumbling, one that seemed to go on forever.
The bombard, I thought. The titan-killer. But if it had slain the thing, I could not tell.
Then an enormous crash, like the very moon had fallen from the sky. Dust filled the air, rising in a rumbling wave. I wondered if the beast had pushed over the walls, topped them like a thrush digging through the mulch. I kept waiting, my heart hammering, my skin slick with sweat, the spyglass pressed to my eye so hard my brow began to hurt.
Then the smoke and dust were scraped thin by a breeze; and as it vanished I saw the walls, still standing; and there, before the breach, the form of the leviathan lying on the ground, its massive shell split asunder, and its abominable face lost in the sands.
The horizon lit up with flares, these a pale blue. I stared at them, my mind swimming.
“What color?” said Ana. “What color, Din?”
“Blue, ma’am. The flares are blue.”
“It’s done, then,” whispered Ana. “The beast is dead. And the Empire persists.”
CHAPTER 40
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I SAW ANA VERY little for the next two days, for I and all the other minor officers were tasked with restoring the city to order. The panic and stampede had been almost as damaging as a leviathan’s wrath, which frustrated and flummoxed many; for after all, the Legion had been quite clear that the titan was approaching. “People are often damned fools about what’s before them,” a Legion princeps commented as we tried to figure out how to move a slain horse from the streets. “And not much smarter regarding what’s behind them, at that. It’s amazing we ever get anything done.”
At the end of the second day, an Iudex militis came calling for me, and I followed his summons to an office in the Legion tower.
I entered to find Vashta seated behind a long black desk with Ana and Uhad before her, listening as she spoke. “…seized all of their holdings here in the canton of Talagray,” she was saying. “Fayazi and her entourage are being held for the time being. But greater progress will require greater labors…” Her hard, dark gaze flicked up to me. “Ah. Kol. Please come in.”
I did so, taking a station behind Ana and hoping I did not stink too heavily of horse.
“I suppose we ought to catch you up on what has happened, Signum,” said Vashta. “But being as events are still happening, that may prove difficult. Scribe-hawks have been sent out across Khanum, reporting on both our victory over the leviathan and the sealing of the breach—and your investigation.”
“The holdings of the Haza family have been seized in the third ring,” Uhad explained to me. He was positively beaming. It was the first time I’d ever seen him smile so. “And work has begun on seizing their holdings in the second. I have delayed my retirement in order to assist in these noble labors.”
“But this will take time, and will involve many legal and political battles,” sighed Vashta. “But for now, it is very possible that all the elder sons of the Haza clan may find themselves dispossessed…and in reward for her cooperation, Fayazi Haza might take their place.”
“Fayazi?” I said, surprised. “She’ll be taking over for the Hazas?”
Vashta shrugged grimly. “She has given us all the communications her elders sent her, proving their guilt. And the Haza lands are invaluable. Someone must manage them. It might as well be someone we own. Time shall tell how all this goes. Needless to say, our victory at the breach has now changed to a much more protracted affair. A pity that we never found out who stole the real dappleglass cure. With it as proof, we could bring our enemies down all the faster. We shall look for it, but I am not optimistic.”
“Yet there are rumblings from the emperor’s Sanctum,” said Uhad. “Signs he shall revoke some of the blessings and privileges bestowed to the Hazas—as well as possibly all the gentry.”
I glanced at Ana. I noticed she had not spoken yet, but sat crooked in her chair, head bowed, face inscrutable.