Page 55 of The Tainted Cup

“Graft trips?” I asked.

“A fungus or something what grows in the crack, so when it’s opened improperly it releases a toxin…” He rapped on it. “This is just a box. And what’s inside it…”

He flicked it open. Inside was a small bed of moss, and lying upon that, a very strange contraption.

It was a small, circular, intricately engraved bronze plate, with five tiny glass vials embedded in it, each one containing fluids of many different colors. Miljin frowned at it, then sniffed it, and grunted, “Well, I’ll be fucked.”

“What is it, sir?”

“It’s a reagents key.”

A flutter in my eyes. I recalled Princeps Otirios back in Daretana, taking out a small glass vial sloshing with black fluid and saying—You’ll need to follow close, sir. This gate is a bit old. Can be fussy.

“For vinegates and the like?” I asked.

“Yeah…but I’ve never seen one like this before. Five different reagents? Whatever portal or path this is for, it must be one of the most secure places on earth.” He stood, grimacing. “Let’s check another room.”

We went to the quarters of Signum Jilki, Topirak’s lover. Again, the flicker-flash of the green sword. Another bronze box—this one hidden in a wall—and inside, another reagents key, this one the same as with Loveh.

“Another,” Miljin muttered. “Another.” He squinted west over his shoulder, like he could see the walls of Talagray just behind him. “Exactly what in the hell,” he said slowly, “was going on in my city?”

I waited, watching his brows bristle. Then he made a fist with his hand, all the knuckles crackling again, and he growled, “You keep one, and I keep the other. Got it? Then let’s get out of here.”

He left, but I tarried behind, thinking of Topirak’s testimony. I went through Jilki’s wardrobe, sniffing at her garments, wondering if I could catch the strange aroma Topirak had described.

Then I caught something, faint but present on a small scarf: a scent of oranje-leaf and some kind of spice.

My eyes fluttered as I matched the scent to a memory. Suddenly I was in Daretana again, crouched before the mangled corpse of Taqtasa Blas suspended in the trees. I’d held a pot of oil in my hands and sniffed it—and caught the aroma of spice and oranje-leaf and wine mullings and perhaps incense.

That was it. Jilki’s scarf smelled just like Blas’s pot of oil. Exactly the same.

Then Miljin’s voice over my shoulder: “Kol…are you smelling that dead woman’s clothes?”

I dropped the scarf. “Coming, sir.”

CHAPTER 15

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WE RODE BACK TOTalagray in silence. Miljin’s gruff bravado had vanished. Now he slumped on his horse, glowering ahead, scabbard swinging at his side. It wasn’t until we could see the fortifications and the bombards ahead—all pointed toward us—that he finally spoke.

“Didn’t use to be like this,” he said.

“Pardon, sir?” I asked. “Like what?”

“All this skulking and skullduggery,” he said. “Keeping order out here used to mean using this…” He patted his sword again. “Until everyone got in line. I mean, it’s a goddamned military city. But then the Empire got good at making money, and then they went and got it in everything, even here. Got big, got complex. Now we need boys like you with brains brimming with…hell, I’ve no idea what’s in your skull, son.”

I glanced at him. “So you, sir…You’re not…”

“I’m no Sublime,” he said. “Got grafts and suffusions and the like for strength and reaction speed and recovery. Same shit they use on horses, some tell me. But none of it went toward my mind. Sometimes feel like they keep me around out of some misguided sense of duty.”

“Ana did say you’re a war hero, sir,” I said.

He laughed roughly. “The thing about war, boy, is while it happens, you’ve no idea what’s going on—and when it’s over, everyonespends the rest of your life telling you what you did.” He gestured at the towers of Talagray ahead. “We don’t need war heroes here anyway. We need plotters. Like your Ana. Even if she has pissed off a lot of powerful people.”

“She has?”

“Oh, yes. That’s the problem with figuring shit out—eventually you run into someone who’d prefer all their shit remained thoroughly unfigured. You know much with a blade, lad?”