Page 35 of A Drop of Corruption

“So does smoke.”

I shrugged and puffed on my pipe. Again we lapsed into silence, listening to the calls of the Apoths in the bank.

“So, this man…” I said. “This man somehow hears news of the Treasury delegation and keeps close observation of their movements. He figures out when the last member is going to arrive. He kidnapsthe fellow and comes into Yarrowdale and spends the entire day pretending to be this man, just so he can get into the Treasury vault—through means we still can’t comprehend. Yet he doesn’t just take his prize, whatever it was. Instead, he very calmly places a withered, severed head in the box, along with his inscrutable note. Then he shuts it, returns to his masquerade as Sujedo…and then fabricates his own murder before vanishing into thin air. Is that the full spill of it?”

A dreary silence as Malo thought. “It seems so,” she said.

I took one last puff of my pipe, then tapped it out on the bricks. “All for healing grafts,” I said. “For a cough. It makes no damned sense.”

“Perhaps he knows someone who is sick?” said Malo.

“I doubt it.” I stood, dusted myself off, and carefully stowed the remainder of my pipe away.

“Then what are you thinking?” Malo asked.

“I think something is wrong,” I said. “But I don’t yet know what.” Then I bade her good night and started back up the path to Ana’s lodgings.

II

And All the World a Savage Garden

Chapter 15

Ana sat perfectly still inthe dark of her rooms as she absorbed my report, plucking absently at her Pithian lyre every few minutes. When I finally finished, her fingers retracted from the strings, and she slowly turned her blindfolded face toward me, her mouth open in outrage.

“He left…a fuckingnote?” she asked, incredulous.

“It, ah, appears so, ma’am. Along with a head.”

Ana’s grumbling stretched on and on. She seemed to have entirely forgotten I was there.

“Ah, ma’am?” I asked. “Are yo—”

“I mean,” she thundered finally. “He left anote! I just…I just can’t fucking believe that he had the audacity to leave anote! It bothers me terribly!”

“I, too, was bothered, ma’am,” I said. “Though mostly by the sight of the hea—”

“But frankly, this whole thingreeksof audacity!” She ripped her blindfold off, shot to her feet, and began pacing the room like a convict just told of an extension to their sentence. “Can you imagine how many yards of guts it takes, Din, to prance into such highly guarded institutions with little more than confidence to aid you? Aware all the while that simply running into the wrong person at the wrong time would instantly result in your violent arrest? Why, a delegation member might have traipsed back to the tower for any number of reasons, spied this fucker sauntering about, and said,Hey now, who the hell areyou?Such a thing would be especially dangerous here in this city, which is so crawling with soldiers wary of violence, each empowered to cut anyone down without so much as a peck on the cheek! And now—this! A fuckingnote! I feel we needn’t bother looking at faces to find this man, Din! Just keep an eye out for the fellow with testicles large enough to cause back deformities, and we shall have our culprit!”

She sat and began furiously tuning her lyre.

“He is no thief, Din,” she proclaimed. “Nor is he a smuggler. For smugglers don’t leave notes—and they especially don’t leavepoliticalnotes.”

“Political?”

“Yes! Are you so ignorant of your imperial history, Din? The bastard quotes the emperor himself!”

“He does?” I said, puzzled. “I thought the statement wasSen sez imperiya,rather than—”

“Oh, damn it all!” she fumed. Then she cleared her throat and appeared to recite from memory: “And thus the emperor said to his advisers, ‘We have seen many empires fall, for they did not extend past the breath of their emperors. They decayed, and grew unjust. If I wish this new empire to last, I should not declare to my people thatIam the Empire. Rather, I should say to them,Youare the Empire. And with that blessing, they shall make a realm for the ages.’ ” She sniffed. “That is fromThe Letters and Conversations of Ataska Daavir, Fourth and Final Emperor of the Great and Holy Empire of Khanum.The sixteenth letter, if I recall.”

“All right…but what’s he suggesting by quoting this in a note?”

“Hell if I know!” snarled Ana. “But it’s quite a fucking statement! Especially here, in Yarrow, where the status of the Empire is a bit of a big damned question!” She raised her hands and mimed shoving something away. “I disdain it. I disdain it so, all this fucking spectacle! Nothing irks me more than a showy murderer, as if their wretched deeds were some mystical marvel!”

“And the first lines, ma’am?” I asked. “The bit about sipping from the marrow?”

Her face relaxed, ever so slightly. “Yes…For those who sip from themarrow.That is most curious. It is not from any text I am aware of.” She cocked her head. “Hm. Marrow…marrow, in this city of blood.”