“Who?” said Ana.
“Kaygi Haza. When…when Jolgalgan mentioned she was from Oypat, the old man, drunk, just said flat-out: ‘Ah, Oypat. Well, Blas fucked that up, didn’t he? Fucked it up for everyone, with the cure.’ Then he forgot he ever said it. Because…it didn’t matter to him, what he’d done. But it mattered to Jolgalgan. And it mattered to me.”
There was a tense silence.
“Do you have any idea what it’s like,” Uhad said softly, “to have so many memories in my mind? So many eternal, endless, everlasting memories of…of corruption, of bribery, of exploitation? All while we imperial officers slaved and worked and died to keep horrors from our shores?”
Miljin’s voice echoed in my ears as I gazed at Uhad: Can’t take too many wet seasons, the engravers. They don’t age well.
“I thought the walls kept the titans out,” said Uhad wearily. “But the more I worked, the more I felt like they caged us in, with the gentry. And no one was going to fix it. It was all broken. Nobody cared. Nobody cared, so long as things kept going on as they were.”
“So you tried yourself,” said Ana. She trembled with rage. “You tried to fix it yourself—and you killed hundreds of people doing it!”
“I had to do something!” Uhad snarled. “I couldn’t stand to just sit by and watch! The Empire was doing nothing, nothing! As was the Iudex! And you could do nothing, either, Ana! Hell, you’d tried to stop the Hazas, and you’d gotten banished to Daretana for it!”
At that, Ana stood up and bellowed, “Are you so sure, Tuwey Uhad?”
Uhad stared at her, bewildered. “Wh-what do you mean?”
“Don’t you think it oddly perfect, Uhad,” thundered Ana, “that I of all people was put on the doorstep of the Talagray canton? Don’t you think it very convenient that of all the investigators in all the Iudex, it was me who was placed directly next door to the canton with the most blatant gentry corruption of all?”
“You…you mean…You were sent to Daretana…to watch the Hazas?” he said, stunned.
“And I barely had to wait four months before they landed in my lap,” she hissed. “But it was because of you. Because the Iyalets failed in their duty. Because you failed in your duty!”
“No, that’s…that’s impossible!” said Uhad. “They killed your assistant investigator! I know that! Even the Hazas know that!”
“Have you ever seen the body?” snapped Ana. She was shivering with rage now. “Have you ever considered that it was very convenient to let the Hazas believe that I had been neutralized, so that they could then do something very obvious and stupid? Something that would give the Iudex an excuse to bring them to heel? But then you had to make your play at justice. And countless people are dead because of it! What a fool you are, Uhad. What an utter, utter fool.” She turned to me. “Din, get out your engraver’s bonds. I am ordering you to arrest this man. You wanted justice, Tuwey Uhad, and it shall be given to you—by a rope and a scaffold, surely.”
CHAPTER 41
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AS EVENING FELL WE gathered in the Trifecta, between the Legion and Engineering and the now-closed Iudex tower. They had built a bonfire there, a four-beamed structure with an ornate woven roof. In the center lay stacks of blackwood, soaked in oil, and atop the stacks rested four wooden figures, anointed in black, purple, red, and blue—a symbolic pyre, for each of the Iyalets that had lost officers.
As the sun set the holy men of the imperial cults lit their thuribles and bathed the pyre in holy smokes and sang of the Khanum, of the march to the sea, of the building of the walls, and of the Empire that awaited us on the other side of this life. When they finished a Legionnaire stepped forward, limping on a crutch, and lit a torch and placed it at the bottom of the pyre, and as the fires blossomed I stood among the weeping crowd and said my thanks to the officers who had fallen during these dark days—both those who had perished in the savagery at the walls, and those felled by the twitch, in this city we deemed civilized.
The crowd departed, yet I remained, my thoughts black and cloudy from all the suffering I’d witnessed, memories I’d never scrub from my soul. Then I saw I did not stand alone: the hulking figure of Captain Miljin stood at the edge of the pyre, staring into the flickering flames.
I approached until I stood beside him. The heat here was so great I felt the hairs upon my face curling. There was a distant, solemn look on the captain’s face, and for a long while he did not notice me. Then he did a double take and stared, as if surprised to find me here, a glint of madness in his eyes.
“Oh,” he said. “Kol.”
“Evening, sir,” I said. I bowed.
He did not answer but resumed staring at the fire. A long silence passed.
“How are you doing, sir?” I asked. An absurd question to ask, but it was all I could think to say.
“Tell me…” he said.
“Yes, sir?”
“Were you there, in the room, when she unmasked Uhad?”
I hesitated, then nodded. I did not tell him that it was I who’d laid bonds on the immunis and escorted him to the cells.
Miljin stared into the fire for a moment longer. “And…did you ever suspect?” he asked. His voice was terribly hoarse. “Did you ever know it was he who wove such evil about all our ears, all this time?”
“I didn’t, sir. I had no idea. I don’t think Ana truly knew until after Nusis was killed.”
“Killed on my watch,” he said. “In my city.”
Another long moment passed. Ashes danced around us like pollen on a spring breeze.
“None of us knew,” I said. “You couldn’t have known, si—”
“Don’t,” he said sharply. “Don’t bother.”
I looked away, still bathed in the heat of the pyre, and held my tongue.
“But…I was right about one thing,” he said. “The Empire has less need of brawn these days, and noble battlers, and more need of plotters and schemers. Like your Ana. And you, perhaps.”
I did not know what to say to such a thing. I held my tongue.
“You’re leaving soon—yes, Kol?” he said.
“Yes, sir. In a few days, I think.”
He nodded. “Then will you do an old man a favor?”
“If I can, sir.”
With a grunt, Miljin unbuckled his scabbard and gazed at it for a moment. Then he held it out to me. “Will you take this with you when you go?” he asked.
I stared at the scabbard, the mechanical hilt glinting in the dying light of the pyres.
“I’m not staying in the Iudex, Kol,” said Miljin. “Not my place anymore. I’ll return to the Legion, to what I know best. Walls and titans and bombards and the sea.”
“Sir, I—”
“But it’s as I told you—swords have little use against a leviathan. They’re better applied against them’s who make it difficult to fight leviathans. And this one will do more for the Empire to go with you, to wherever your path takes you, Kol.”
I took the scabbard from him, bewildered. Again, I marveled at its lightness, its leather warm from the heat of the flames. “You mean back to Daretana, sir?” I asked.
Miljin finally smiled. “Ha! You think you’re going back to Daretana, boy? How quaint.”
I wondered what he meant by that, but then I heard a voice: “You’re all right!”
I looked over my shoulder and saw the Legionnaire on the crutch approaching, his head haloed by the setting sun behind. It took me a moment to spy the shabby, earnest smile of Captain Kepheus Strovi within that shadowy face.
“You remember how to open it, Kol?” said Miljin beside me.
Distracted, I returned to him. I nodded. “I do, sir. But—”
“Good.” He nodded to me. “Good luck in your travels, Signum. I wish you much honor, and great success.”
Then he turned and marched away, stumping out of the Trifecta toward the east.
* * *
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