The Overseer stands there, motionless.
I relinquish my grip, wincing as the water still on my hand leaves a red, suppurating print on her skin. “Now answer my questions, and answer wholly and truthfully. What is this place?” My voice shakes.
“A purification room.”
“What does that mean?” Bile in my throat. I know the answer. I still have to hear it.
“Contaminated water is drawn in. It is treated, then redirected to the city’s wells.”
Oh,vek, no. “Treated?”
“Internally. It is the only known way to remove the worst of the toxins.”
I say nothing, just looking at the nearest corpse quivering on its table. I’ve been drinking from those wells for the past few months.
Then I bend double and retch the meagre contents of my stomach onto the grimy floor.
The bile trickles away into the closest of the green canals. The floors are all mildly sloped toward them, I realise. Ensuring the least chance of dirtying the “clean” water, presumably.
I spit and wipe my mouth. “How many more iunctii like you are there down here?”
“I am the only one assigned to this room.”
“No other Overseers? No guards?”
“None.”
I glance around. “Where’s the way out?” I’m not intending to use it, but it would be good information to have.
“The entrance is sealed.”
“Sealed?” My heart lurches with a fresh wave of unease. “When?”
“Six hundred and thirty-three years ago.”
I don’t say anything for a few seconds. Close my eyes against the horror of it.
“Rottinggods,” I whisper.
I ask more, but get few answers as helpful as what has already come. She is certain that the waste canals from here lead outside and rejoin the river north of Duat; though she cannot speak to the specifics, she assures me that in the “early years,” iunctii who could no longer perform their tasks were disposed of that way.
No longer perform their tasks. I shiver at the cold delivery. The pipes are wide enough to accommodate a body, even if the information gives me no indication of whether the way is entirely submersed, or there is a long drop onto rocks at the end, or anything else useful. But it’s something.
I do all I can to focus on the questions and block out the shuddering mass around me. There are no moans of pain, no sounds at all except the gurgling of water. Somehow, that makes it worse.
Eventually, I finish. Loathe to proceed, but even more loathe to stay. This place is a dark, repellent fever dream.
I hesitate one more time. “Are they in pain?”
“I do not know.”
I just nod, though it’s not as if she can see my reaction. I don’t know what else I expected.
“When I finish speaking, you will resume your duties. You will not report my presence or these questions. You will forget that I was ever here, and that you were interrupted in any way.”
She stands there for a few moments and then, content I’m done, moves again. She doesn’t even glance back in my direction.
I watch her, then push my attention back to the convulsing dance of flesh around me. No chance they’re not in pain. I could put them out of their misery. Gods, I could use a few of those collars myself, even if the chains stringing them together would be almost certain to disintegrate.
