Page 122 of A Drop of Corruption

The two augurs slowly turned to look at each other. The meaning of their gaze was unreadable to me, but they held it for a long moment. Then they turned back, and the woman tapped out a short, simple message.

Ghrelin spoke for her: “Are you here to ask of Sunus Pyktis?”

My blood flushed hot. I tried not to let my eyes react too much.

“Yes,” I said evenly. “How do you know this?”

Another long silence. The augurs sat there, inscrutable. Then the woman dug in her suit and held up a tiny scrap of paper covered in scribblings before tapping again on her board.

Ghrelin spoke for her: “This wasknown,Iudex. This waspredicted.We haveprojectedthat these events may come to pass.”

“How did you predict this?” I asked.

The woman shook her head and replaced the note within her suit. Then she tapped again: “He lives. Helives.Yet how is this so?”

“I cannot tell you,” I said. “I am here only to ask about his service in this place.”

More tapping from the woman: “We will tell you about his service here, if you tell us of his acts in the world beyond.”

Then the man: “For his service here was strange, and troubled. Though most could not see it, we did.”

“When he perished,” tapped the woman, “we thought it wrong, even then. Such a clumsy mistake, such a blundering—from Sunus Pyktis? The golden child who could do no wrong?”

Then the man: “The augur whom all marveled at? Brightest among the bright, most brilliant among the brilliant?”

The woman said: “No.”

The man said: “No.”

“It was wrong. All of it, wrong.”

“This we knew. This was known.”

The woman leaned close, her nose nearly touching the glass. “And when we were told the Iudex was coming to talk to us, and only us…”

The man then: “Yes. He has been found. He lives.”

The woman: “We have beenreadyfor you, Iudex. We can say much. Just—tell us. What has he done out there? Is he safe, and whole?”

I watched as their fingers fluttered out these final messages. Then they went totally cold and still, as if refusing to grant me any hint of information.

Yet I noted: they were concerned with Pyktis’s safety. They did not think him a murderer or a criminal, and had not yet contemplated that I was here because of some act he had done.

I wondered what to do. Then I realized: all this felt rather familiar, didn’t it? Didn’t I know very well how to deal with a person so ravenous for information?

I said, “Aren’t you wise enough to determine the answers by what I cannot say, as opposed to what I can?”

Their faces flickered: I caught a flash of anger, perhaps. Then the woman tapped, and when Ghrelin spoke, his voice was cold and resentful: “Flirtatious. A tease. I dislike this.”

More tapping from the man, and Ghrelin said, “He has been told the rules, yes. Swallowed them up, swilled them about. How foul.”

“Thelenai has gotten to him,” said the woman. “Told him not to tell us a thing. Cruel, cruel Thelenai.”

“Cruel, cruel Thelenai,” said the man. “No more, nothing new. Instead we shall read only innards, and nerve clusters, and no more.”

The woman: “Bones and sinew, veins and viscera.”

The man: “Blots of blood and strings of membranes.”