The tainted cup, p.40
The Tainted Cup, page 40
“You don’t really expect me to answer that, do you, ma’am?”
“I’m still your commanding officer. I could order you to do so. But that’d be rather boring.”
I thought about it. “Well…before I came here, ma’am…”
“Yes?”
“I would have told you the Empire was might, and mass, and strength, and scale.”
“And now?”
“Now…now it feels frail, and imperfect, and improvised, and…and coincidental, ma’am. The wrong wind might blow it all apart, should it go untended.”
“Accurate. And I somewhat agree. But I have always rather thought the Empire was wrought in the image of that which it was made to fight.”
“A…a titan, ma’am?”
“Oh, yes. For the Empire is huge. Complex. Often unwieldy and slow. And in many places, weak. A massive colossus, stretching out across the cantons, one in whose shadow we all live…and yet it is prone to wounds, infections, fevers, and ill humors. But its strangest feature is that the more its citizens feel it is broken, the more broken it actually becomes. Just look at Uhad. It must be tended to, as you said. For without this tending, the Empire shall fail. Yet it’s rather tricky to tend to something from inside it, yes?”
I narrowed my eyes at her. “And…what is your role in tending to this colossus, ma’am?”
“Oh, I told you, Din,” she said, smiling dreamily. “When we last rumbled down this very road. It’s the maintenance folk who keep the Empire going. Someone, after all, must do the undignified labor to keep the grand works of our era from tumbling down. I simply perform maintenance, in my own little way. And you have ably assisted me in that, of course.”
We rumbled on in silence for a moment.
I sucked my teeth, thinking. “You once said, ma’am, that there would be a time when you’d tell me many truths.”
“That’s so.”
“Is now such a time?”
“Now?” She pressed a hand against the wall of the carriage, feeling its shuddering. “Now is the time for some truths, should you like to hear them, Din. We can then decide if you’d like to hear more after that.”
“You are no ordinary Iudex Investigator. Are you?”
“That is true. I am not.”
“Not if you were stationed in Daretana to watch the Hazas, as part of some giant plot.”
“That is also true.”
“Though I wonder what you’re going to do in Daretana now, ma’am.”
“Oh, I am not going back to Daretana, Din,” she said. “The Iudex office there will now be closed. It was a very good place to be banished to, but it has served its purpose. Instead, this carriage shall first stop at a small town on the border of the Tala canton. There, I shall discuss the events of the past weeks with the conzulate, who waits for me now.”
I stared at her. “The…the Iudex conzulate? He’s waiting on you?”
“Has been for the past day. I am most eager to debrief him. It was his idea to invent the fiction of my banishment, after all.”
“Wait. And your assistant? Did the twitch kill her, or is she truly alive? Was that all just a story you invented to deceive the Hazas?”
“You do not know her,” sniffed Ana. “And her affairs are her own. I will not divulge her situation to you, as able and admirable as you are, Din.”
I boggled at this for a moment. The idea that a conzulate—one of the giant, ageless beings who were second only to the emperor himself in the imperial hierarchy—was now waiting on Ana was impossible for me to comprehend.
“What will happen after you talk to the conzulate, ma’am?” I asked slowly.
“Well…he will likely give me a new assignment,” she said. “For I am an investigator, but I serve in a very…special division. I am given issues that are either sensitive, inordinately difficult to make sense of, or both. In other words, I do what many folk do in the grand and heavenly Empire of Khanum—I keep things running, in hopes of keeping the walls up. Once I speak to the conzulate, I shall be off to my next task, I suspect. The next crime, the next murder, the next treachery.”
I stared out the window, watching the countryside roll by.
“Yet before I go,” she said, “the conzulate will also likely want to speak to you, Din.”
I said nothing.
“For I will still be in need of an assistant investigator,” she said. “And you did a decent job in Talagray.” She thought for a moment. “Could have been cheerier and smiled a bit more, sure, but still, a good job. I would have you keep doing it, if you prefer.”
My gaze stayed fixed on the countryside. The shimmering veil of the jungle had embraced us once again, and all was dark. I thought of muddy little Daretana, and what few opportunities would await there.
I glanced down at my boots, now worn and stained from all my travels. They didn’t look quite so bad, I thought. Perhaps they would look even better with a bit more wear.
“I bought you something, ma’am,” I said. “A gift.”
“Really?” she said. “Why?”
I handed her a small wooden box. “Felt I owed it to you, after all this.”
She opened the box and sniffed it, then sat up, her body thrumming with elation.
“Moodies!” she said, delighted. “Mood grafts! And are they…”
“The hallucinogenic ones,” I said. “The ones you’re always asking about. I had to visit a very dodgy shop in Talagray to get them. Just please don’t consume one now, ma’am. I suspect that’d make this trip quite a bit less pleasant.”
She cackled with glee. “No, no, and it’d be unwise to attend my debriefing mooded clean out of my skull, Din. Thank you. I do very much appreciate this.”
I smiled wearily. “Perhaps an odd way to begin my duties as your formal assistant—breaking the law before I even start.”
She stowed the little box away. “Is it?” Then she grinned her horrid, predatorial smile: too many teeth, and all too white. “I find it full of good portents, myself.”
I pulled my straw cone hat down over my eyes, lay back with my sword at my side, and began to doze.
For my mom and nana,
who were the gateway to murder mysteries
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
| | |
I would like to thank my editor, Julian Pavia, for helping me crunch this sucker out. I’d had the idea of writing a fun murder mystery novel for a while, and then I sat down and pumped out something that was very decisively not a murder mystery novel, and Julian helped me realize that. I then had to go through the rather tempestuous process of chucking it in the garbage and starting over. That is an odd psychological dance to do, but a necessary one—it is better to throw away words you did not want to write than keep them, even when their total is very high—and I appreciate him for sitting through it.
I would also like to thank my family, as I often do in my books, but especially for this one. Writing murder mysteries is largely a process of logistics, I think, ensuring that the timelines work and the right evidence gets in the right place at the right time. You essentially become the Jeff Bezos of killing dudes you just made up. This takes up a pretty large amount of brain space at any given moment, so I would like to apologize to my family for asking very stupid questions like “Which child is playing soccer today?” or “Which trip are we packing for, again?” or even “How old am I turning this year?” I would like to apologize further because I actually really enjoyed writing this one, and plan to write more murder mysteries, so I will probably continue being a very stupid man. Tough nuggets, suckers.
I would also like to thank my mom for giving me the Nero Wolfe books that inspired so much of Ana, even if I eventually decided she was more like Hannibal Lecter than Wolfe. I would also like to thank my grandmother Marilyn Shaw, whose laundry room was overflowing with old paperbacks, with many of them being murder mysteries I read. I like to think she would have enjoyed this one, though maybe not the language. Sorry, Nana.
Two other folks I’d like to thank are Jesse Jenkins and Jerusalem Demsas, who both spend what must be somewhat frustrating careers cataloging how America is now terrified of building stuff. Their work exploring this and lobbying for change—along with many, many others—inspired a great deal of the Preservation Boards in this story. Regulations have their uses, but we cannot allow them to form the jar that will eventually be used to trap us and pickle us in our own brine. I wanted to write about civil servants and bold builders for that exact purpose. Keep up the fight!
Yours,
Robert
BY ROBERT JACKSON BENNETT
City of Stairs
City of Blades
City of Miracles
Foundryside
Shorefall
Locklands
The Tainted Cup
Photo: © Josh Brewster Photography
Robert Jackson Bennett is the author, most recently, of the Founders Trilogy. Previous to this, he wrote the Divine Cities Trilogy, which was a 2018 Hugo Award finalist in the Best Series category. The first book in the series, City of Stairs, was also a finalist for the World Fantasy and Locus awards, and the second, City of Blades, was a finalist for the World Fantasy, Locus, and British Fantasy awards. His previous novels, which include American Elsewhere and Mr. Shivers, have received the Edgar Award, the Shirley Jackson Award, and the Philip K. Dick Citation of Excellence. He lives in Austin with his family.
robertjacksonbennett.com
X: @robertjbennett
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Robert Jackson Bennett, The Tainted Cup
