Page 116 of A Drop of Corruption

I turned about, woozily staring at the pier, which appeared to be little more than a long strip of wood and stone dangling out into the gray waters, and many fretvine warehouses clumped up together atthe shore. “Is it, sir?”

“Oh, yes. You were told of the commander-prificto’s plan to move the marrow, yes? Here is where the ship shall first come to restock, before continuing on to the Shroud. We get so few vessels that sail abroad that this is the only place that can handle a ship of that size—yet it’s hardly ever used, Kol. No reagents have passed through those warehouses in months, and what few wardens we’ve spared to search this place have found not a whiff. Hopefully the Shroud will offer more guidance for you…Regardless, let us board, so we can get comfortable, and wait.”

We did so, I walking wobbily as the cargo boat rocked beneath me. Then we sat and waited. My bones felt heavy where they rested within my flesh. It was something of a struggle just to sit upright.

“Thelenai told you how the interview should proceed, yes?” Ghrelin asked. “I will accompany you to the augurs, and then…I will change. I will be someone different, as the grafts within me take hold.”

Again, I nodded. “You were an augur yourself, sir, weren’t you?” I asked. “What was it like? What should I expect?”

“That’s a little like asking about a half-remembered dream, Signum,” he said. “And more so, former augurs are strictly instructed not to discuss their work within the Shroud. But I suppose I can break policy for this…” His eyes narrowed in a reflective half smile. “In a large group, it is wonderful. So much sharing of information, so much work, so much worth…In smaller groups it is powerfully, curiously intimate. Relationships there are…very different.” A pause, lost in a memory. “Which is all to say, I do not know what to expect. I was an augur long ago, and it is different for each one.”

I gazed at him for a moment, my thoughts lumbering through the channels of my mind. “Has your memory perhaps been altered, sir?” I slurred.

His helmeted head snapped to face me. “What?”

“Y-your memory, sir. My immunis said the Empire can alter some folk, so that they cannot discuss certain subjects, and speculated if it might have been done to you. I have not heard of such a thing trulydone, but I wondered if yo—”

“No!” Ghrelin said vehemently. “No, no! No, my memories have not been altered.” He shuddered. “Such a practice exists, certainly, but I can’t comprehend why Dolabra brought it up regarding myself! I personally have never heard of it being implemented, but I can only imagine…”

“Imagine what, sir?”

“Well. That if it were ever truly used, it would be done for secrets far more dreadful than any found here.”

“Than…theShroud? There are secrets in the Empire more dangerous than even that, sir?”

Ghrelin was silent. Then I heard a tremendous fluttering, and I looked up and saw the billowing sails unfurling above us. They rippled, caught wind, and snapped into sharp white blades set against the slate-gray sky. A great, curious swimming feeling came over me, like the sky and sea were spinning about the ship.

Ghrelin’s voice echoed from deep within his helm: “We’re leaving.”

I fought to find the shore and saw that he was right: Yarrowdale was receding, the cheery tips of the fretvine cottages growing smaller before my eyes.

—

The cargo shiptumbled out into the gray waters, and soon all of civilization fell to a tiny, rambling thread of black in the distance. Despite the grafts within me, I felt my pulse quicken as the expanse of water between myself and civilization grew. I had never truly grasped the enormity of the sea, this great, swilling, surging blankness. I tried to imagine its depths, to wonder how deep it reached, and then, inevitably, came the question of what might be lying down there on the sea floor, gazing up at me—a drifting giant in repose, perhaps?

We drifted on, and on. Then I heard shouts from the crew, calling to one another to be careful, be ready.

“We come to it,” said Ghrelin quietly. “If you wish to see it, now would be a good moment.”

I turned and looked ahead.

To call it tall, or big, or immense did not come close to capturing the nature of the thing rising from the sea. It was unimaginably colossal, a towering sheath of shimmering green that seemed to fill all the horizon ahead of us. I had glimpsed the distant sea walls in the East, yes, and witnessed the landfall of a leviathan from leagues away, but never had I in all my life been so close to something so enormous. The only thing that could contest its size, I thought, would be the sea itself.

We sailed nearer. The Shroud was not a tent, I realized, nor a structure of gauze or moss, as I’d previously imagined; rather, it was thicker, fleshier, more gelatinous, less akin to fabric or vines and more like some colossal growth of seaweed rising from the waters. Nor was it all one piece, but layered like a flower’s petals, each roll of its husk coiled about the next, its viridine flesh shot through with veins of dark green bubbles.

And it moved. It rippled and shifted, billowing in one long, undulating flex from end to end, over and over. It was so strange, and beautiful, and artful; yet there was a subtle terror to it, and to look upon it set something crawling behind my eyes.

Ghrelin pointed up at its peak. “Do you see that bit there?” he asked. “That arch? I made that. It grew weak after a storm, and they raised me and a few others up on scaffolds, and I planted the grafts and nurtured them over the weeks, and…now look at it. I rather think I did a good job…”

I kept watching as the Shroud rippled, studying the gentle, silent curling of the massive construct.

Then I frowned, my muddy brain struck with a thought.

I glanced at the sails above me and saw that they were tight and firm. The wind was constant, then, and very strong.

I looked back at the Shroud. Its strange billowing, I realized, was not caused by the wind.

“It…it moves, sir,” I said quietly. “It moves on its own.”