Page 15 of A Drop of Corruption

“I did not think your appetite for oysters was so tremendous, ma’am.”

“Oh, I’m not actually hungry, Din. Really, it’s that each oyster isdifferent.You can taste in each one which reef they came from, which side they grew upon, which waters they flourished within. They are like melodies of the ocean itself rendered in flesh.” She tilted her right ear to the coast. “Just listen to it. I’ve never been so close to the sea…All about me the world is bright with patterns. I can hear the heartbeat of the ocean in the wax and wane of the waves. I can feel the wind unspooling from its wild tangles out over the waters. And now I taste those waters, and all that dwelt in them.” She grinned savagely as she pried the lump of gray flesh from the bottom of the shell. “I wonder…is this the closest I’ll come to tasting a leviathan’s flesh? Did these oysters absorb a hint of their essence?” She noisily sucked it back. “For I’ve heard whispers thatsomeparts of the titans are edible, if properly bled…”

I grimaced. Though I did not know the manner of Ana’s cognitive alterations—and indeed, she’d always been irritatingly coy about what they were—she’d always shown a predilection for pattern spotting that far surpassed obsession. From ancient history to masonry to the speckling of colors in the human eye—and now, apparently, oysters—Ana was perpetually hungry for new, obscure information to dissect and analyze, so much so that she often went about blindfolded, claiming that to perceive too much of the world made it difficult to focus on what she found interesting.

“Would you be ready for my reports of the day, ma’am?” I asked loudly.

She flicked the spent oyster shell away, and it went clattering over the heaps. “My, my. You seem impatient. Has your day not proceeded well?”

I grimaced as I thought of the little roll of parchment in my pocket.It felt like I was carrying around a bombard charge with a lit fuse. “No,” I said. “It has not.”

“You mean you did not relish the experience of sailing upriver for six days through rough weather,” she said, grinning, “all to come here and peer at clammy corpses? Our home is wherever the dead are found in difficult or delicate circumstances, Din. You should feel quite at ease here! Tell me—what is the situation? Shall our predicament be difficult, or delicate?”

“I’d say both, ma’am,” I said. “But at the moment, it seems more difficult than delicate.”

Her brow furrowed. “Truly? I didn’t read the wrong orders, did I? It’s theTreasuryman, yes? Found dead in a canal?”

“That is only somewhat correct, ma’am. But yes.”

Her brow’s furrows grew until they became small hills. “I would have thought this would be simply adelicatecase, given that it’s a Treasury man dead. Yet you say the death is alsodifficult? Do you not have any concept of how it was done?”

“None,” I said. “The man apparently vanished from his rooms. There is no motive, nor culprit, nor anything of use. Just a bloodstain in a bed, and little more.”

She nodded, head cocked. “Hum! Well. Perhaps thisisa good one. How exciting.” She wiped her mouth on the back of her sleeve and stood. “You know, you are not a stupid person, Din.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” I said, pleased.

“Or, rather, not anunusuallystupid person.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” I said, far less pleased.

“You often quickly catch a whiff of what’s going on, even if you don’t yet have the full picture. It’s only when you’re really very befuddled that I know the work might offer some mild entertainment.” She stuck her arm out. “Come! Take me back to my rooms and let us discuss this. And bribe that irritating little porter child however much it takes to have him clean all this shit up.”

—

I led Anaback to her rooms, which were arranged as she always preferred: all windows tightly shut, her bed in the far corner, her countless books stacked beside it, her musical instruments laid against the wall—she was favoring a Pithian lyre during this trip—and a tea set and iron stove dominating the center of the chamber.

I shut the door behind her. She removed her red blindfold, blinked her wide, wild yellow eyes, and pushed back her bone-white forelock as she looked around. “This room is a littletoobig, Din,” she said. “It shall take me time to grow acclimated.”

“Would you like me to cover the windows with rugs, ma’am? That could block out more light.”

“No, no. The light isn’t the issue, but the size…Too much for me to look at. But I shall manage.” She paced a wobbly circle and waved to the teapot. “I asked the porter to procure me the roots of some Yarrow sprinklefoot—I’m told the leaves add an interesting aroma to the tea. Might you oblige me a cup? You can brief me on our intriguing pile of human parts as you do so.”

I slid the appropriate vial from my engraver’s satchel, sniffed at the fragrance of nectar, and began speaking as I went about brewing her a pot of tea, my eyes shivering as I regurgitated every aspect of everything I’d seen that day. Ana listened, blindfolded again to focus, yet she sat not on a chair or on her bed but sprawled on her side on the floor, one long, pale digit tracing the curl of the fretvine surface: a curiously girlish pose, despite her somewhat older age.

It was very late when I finished my report. I could glimpse the pale moon peeking through the gaps in the windows, and the sounds of the port had died away, drowned in the rumble of the seas. I had to flick the mai-lantern in the corner to awaken the grubs within and set them glowing, and soon a soft blue light filled the room.

Ana sat still for a long while, the now-cool cup of tea clutched in her hand. Then she began rocking back and forth: a telltale tic that she was thinking hard.

“I begrudgingly admit,” she finally proclaimed, “this murder is more promising than the last couple we’ve dealt with.”

“Then youdothink this was murder here in Yarrow, ma’am?”

“Oh, certainly,” she said. She turned over to lie on her back. “It is most definitely murder. Our dear dismembered Sujedo did not have a fit of the heart, tumble into the tides, and get eaten by wandering turtles. I think he was killed, and I think the manner in which it was done tells us a great deal.”

Ana tossed back the tea, then threw the cup aside and held her hands up, fingers splayed, like a troubadour about to begin a tale-telling. “Imagine it! Imagine Sujedo seated on a canal barge, floating upriver. An arrow from the brush would have been quick, grisly, and—apparently!—not uncommon for this place. Or as he disembarked from the barge and made his way into town—someone could have bumped into him and put a blade in between his ribs while no one saw. That would have been easy, too. Or, as I think you know well, perhaps one could serve the man a slice of dried fish, laced with poison undetectable through the powerful flavor of the aged meat…”

I glared at her. “Your point is taken,” I said. “Death would be an easy thing to deliver in a place like this—is that it?”