Page 127 of A Drop of Corruption

“What did you find?” I asked.

After a resentful silence, the man tapped out: “We realized he had not been contemplating a jump from the window. Rather, he had been about to climbdown.”

“There was a chamber just below the window,” tapped the woman. “Leading to a section of building that had been sealed off. The consequences of an old contamination. Walled off and forgotten.”

“This was where he’d been vanishing to,” tapped the man. “Through holes and crawl spaces, to halls forgotten and dark.”

“We did not know this,” tapped the woman. “Until weeks after he died. Until we solved his puzzle ourselves.”

The man: “For we finally followed in his footsteps. Climbed down to this secret place. And then…”

Another silence. The augurs exchanged a tense look. Then the man tapped out: “We found ashrine.”

“A…a shrine?” I asked. “To a spirit? A pantheon?”

“We did not know,” said the woman. “Do not know. It was no cult that I recognized, but a shrine it was. Decorated and secret, with oil lamps and delicate bowls.”

“With ribbons, and cloths,” said the man. “Wreathed with facsimiles of flowers and herbs, wrought of paper. We do not know how he made it all. But then, he was most brilliant.”

“Describe this shrine, please,” I said. “What did it look like?”

“Why describe it,” said the woman, “when we can show you?”

—

The two augursdug in their robes again, as if seeking to find yet another prediction, but they took out not parchments but rather three small wooden figures, carefully carved, still tied to their robes with string. Then with slow, thoughtful movements, they untied them and placed them before the glass for me to see.

They were figures of men, robed and bearded and stern, with their stubby arms extended. Circlets sat upon the brows of each one, the very image of kings of ancient days, high and tall and proud.

The man’s fingers tapped upon his board: “These formed the heart of his shrine. We took them from it. Kept them. Puzzled over them. As we puzzle over Pyktis to this day.”

The woman watched me closely and tapped: “Can you see reason in this? Can you see truth in this carven wood?”

The man: “For we cannot. We think it is incomplete. The figures seem to be made to hold something. A stick, or rod, or wand. We do not know.”

I stared at the figures for a great while. An idea began to calcify within my mind, like ice forming at the top of a pool of water, and as it grew, my spine went cold.

I had seen such figures before, arranged on the king’s hall in the High City of Yarrow, their carven figures illuminated by oil lamps floating before them. And I’d seen smaller versions of them, as well, had I not?

My eyes fluttered, and I recalled what Satrap Darhi had told me, a wooden totem much like these held in his hand:We Yarrow labor under the watch of our ancestors. All we do must honor their name.

Our ancestors.

“No,” I whispered. “It is impossible.”

The woman, tapping harshly: “What do you mean?”

My mind raced on, hurtling toward thoughts that seemed senseless. Pyktis had been a great augur, a Rathras Apoth, prized among the Shroud. He could be no other thing.

The prince’s words:This is old history. But…my grandfathers found many imperial visitors who were more than happy to become a wife of the throne, as it meant living in great finery. They came here, Tala, or Kurmini, or Rathras, and gave children to the king and the most esteemed members of his court…

But it could be so. Perhaps it could be so.

Trembling, I cleared my throat and said, “The metal you saw inPyktis’s hands, the day you found him in the window. What color was it?”

“It was silver,” said the man. “This I saw. Why?”

I ignored them and kept staring at the totems, studying their crude faces. Their stubby arms, extended as if to hold something: perhaps a stick, or a string.