That gave me pause. An Iudex engraver’s bonds were a set of cleverly engineered manacles which came with twenty tiny combination locks that could be quickly set to any sequence. The sequences were so complex that only someone with an enhanced memory could recall them; so, when the manacles were clapped on someone’s wrists, only the engraver who’d put them on could easily take them off. Yet I had never had the chance to use mine yet.
“I do wish to ask, ma’am,” I said.
“Yes, Din?”
“Well…previously all our cases were about pay fraud.”
“So?”
“So…should I expect anything different here?”
A flippant shrug. “Generally I find the main difference with murder cases is how loud they are. All the screaming, you see. But you should be prepared. There is a very high chance one of those three people you’re going to bring here participated in a murder. People under that sort of stress do all kinds of dumb shit. So you’ll want to be armed—bring your sword.”
“I’m afraid I don’t have a sword, ma’am,” I said.
“You don’t?” she said. “Why not?”
“I’m still in my apprenticeship to you.”
A stupefied pause. “You are?”
“Yes? I’ve only been working for you for four months, ma’am. I don’t get imperial-issued arms until my apprenticeship is up.”
“Well…hell, I don’t know, bring a big fucking stick or something! Do I have to think of everything?”
“I can bring a practice sword, ma’am,” I said. “There’s no policy against that, and I’m quite familiar with the—”
“Yes, yes, yes,” she said, flapping her hand at me. “First in your class at dueling, you wouldn’t shut up about that when I interviewed you. Do that, then. And search them before they come in. Understood?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Good.” She returned to plucking at her wire contraption. “Good evening, then, Din.”
I stood at her doorway, still standing at attention.
“I said good evening, Din. But you appear to still be here.”
“It’s the thirtieth of Skalasi, ma’am,” I said. “End of the month.”
“Oh.” With a sigh, she stood. “Right. Your dispensation. Where’s the form…” She ripped open a drawer, pulled out a piece of parchment, and hurriedly scribbled on it. “There. Another month’s good work noted. Dance off to the banks, then, and collect your pay.”
I bowed as I took it. “Thank you, ma’am.”
She returned to her contraption. “When the hell do I get to stop bothering with those damned forms, Din?”
“When I am no longer your apprentice and become your official assistant.”
“Oh, yes.” She laughed dully. “When you graduate. As if climbing the Daretana bureaucracy was somehow special.”
I stood up straight, glaring ahead. She seemed to taste the change in my demeanor: she glanced at me, then sighed.
“Ohh, what is it?” she said. “What have I said now?”
“It is special,” I said, “to me, ma’am.” I looked at her. “And to most of us here in this canton, who have joined the Iyalets to better our position.”
She paused. For once there was no hint of a grin playing at her lips.
“Ahh,” she said. “Well. Shit. In that case, Din, I…” Her jaw flexed, like she had to silently practice the word before saying it; and when she did, she said it grudgingly, like pulling a sour tooth. “I apologize.”
“Understood, ma’am,” I said. “For what it’s worth, I do appreciate your being willing t—”
“Shut up!” she snapped.
“What?”
She started waving her hands about. “Just shut up, Din!”
“I mean…I…what?”
“I mean shh! Be quiet!”
She held up a finger, eyes wide, head cocked.
Then I heard it: a soft, eerie chiming sound.
“Are you hearing that, Din,” she whispered, “or am I really going mad now?”
“I hear it, ma’am.” I looked around for the source of the chiming, bewildered, but Ana whirled to look at her contraption.
“It works? It works!” She cackled with glee. “I’ve read about such instruments, but I wasn’t quite sure if I’d be able to pull it off in such a crude environment…”
I looked over her shoulder at the contraption. It was a boxlike frame of wires, with a round, heavy weight hanging down from the exact center. The weight had a little metal tip at the end, which rested against a situr string stretched across the bottom of the frame. I realized the weight was moving very slightly, vibrating from some unseen force, so its tip was tapping against the string with a soft chiming.
“What’s that, ma’am?” I asked.
“An Engineering quake instrument,” she said. “When the earth below moves at all, just shakes the tiniest bit, the weight tries to stay in place, and bounces against the string. It takes a lot to calibrate it right, but if you do it, it can be very sensitive. For example—you can’t feel the earth shaking now, can you, Din?”
“The earth is shaking?” I said. “Right now? Truly?”
“You’re probably accustomed to it, having been here for so long. But yes. The earth is shaking. Right now.”
I watched as the little weight bounced against the string, and felt my skin go cold.
“It’s shaking…” I said. “It’s shaking because…”
“Yes,” she said quietly. “What we are witnessing, Din, are the quakes from the sea floor about two hundred leagues away, as a leviathan slowly churns its way through the bottom of the ocean, toward the coast.”
I stared at the bouncing weight. The atonal chiming suddenly seemed far louder.
“Must be a big one,” said Ana, grinning. “Let’s hope the sea walls hold, eh?”
CHAPTER 4
| | |
IT WAS LATE BY the time I got to the post station at the edge of town. The Fisher’s Hook twinkled high above the gray treetops, bent slightly to the east, signaling the fading of the month of Skalasi and the beginning of the month of Kyuz. Though the post station was deserted except for a few exhausted-looking mules tied up at the back, Postmaster Stephinos was still leaning against his counter, arms crossed, a thread of smoke unscrolling from his tiny pipe. The coal in its bowl danced in the dark as he nodded his head at me.
“Evening, Kol,” he said. “Thought I’d be expecting you.”
“Evening, Stephinos,” I said. “I’ve a letter to mail.”
“I’m sure you do. That time of the month. Hence why I waited for you.”
“Oh. You did?”
He gestured to himself, a flamboyant little flourish—Obviously, as I am here.
“Oh, well. Thank you for that, Steph.”
He watched me fumble in my pockets, his black Legionnaire’s cloak half-lost in the dark, his gaze keen but not impatient. The position of Postmaster was close to that of a god in a place like Daretana, touching nearly everything that mattered to everyone every day. How lucky we were to have one as benevolent as Stephinos.
I handed over the parchment Ana had given me. Stephinos filed it away and slid another piece of paper over to me: my dispensation, a document I could bring to any imperial bank to collect my monthly pay.
“I’m going to be really indulgent this time,” I said, picking it up.
“Are you now,” he said.
“Yes. I’m going to hold it for ten seconds rather than the usual five before giving it right back to you, and won’t that be a treat.”
He grinned. I studied my monthly dispensation, trying to take satisfaction in it. Like every piece of text I saw, the letters quivered and slipped about, but the numbers made sense—though the amount they indicated was very small.
“What a thing it is,” I said, “to be rich for a handful of minutes.” I sighed, put it back down on the counter, and pushed it over to him. “Or at least slightly less poor.”
Stephinos watched me, a sympathetic gleam in his eye. “Need an envelope?” he said around his pipe.
“No,” I said. “I’ve got one.” I slid the envelope out of my pocket and handed it over. I’d spent a few minutes yesterday working on the address, sketching parallel lines on its front to make sure the letters touched the lines on the top and bottom. It was difficult for me to write legible text, but if I was patient and careful, I could manage it.
Stephinos appraised my work like I’d made a copy of a holy text. “This one’s pretty good!” he said. “Much better than the others.”
“Don’t need to drown me in compliments, Steph. But I appreciate it.”