Page 79 of A Drop of Corruption

“Oh,” sighed Ana, and she rubbed her face. “Well, for one thing, it would help if I got a full briefing from my investigator in an environment with a little lesspressure! I’ve hardly had any time to question poor Din on what he saw. It’s all been panicked whispering in your little meeting room here, like a lord and his maid attempting to arrange a furtive fuck.”

Malo glanced at me, appalled, but I was still so shaken that Ana’s words hardly registered.

“Then how shall we assist?” asked Thelenai. “Do you need simply time?”

“I need time, and to return to my quarters,” said Ana, wrinklingher nose. “There are too many vapors and sounds and surfaces here. And—and!—I shall need to dine. Great thought, after all, works up a great appetite.”

“To…dine?” said Thelenai. “Can you not simply sup as you please?”

“Well, Icould,ma’am. But you are a senior Apoth officer, with access to many reagents, and precursors, and specimens…” She grinned. “So, I am sure you could acquire manyexoticclasses of flesh—true?”

Chapter 30

The vegetables, somehow,were the least objectionable part of Ana’s feast. I tried not to look at them as I sniffed my vial and reported to her in her quarters. They were the most undesirable vegetation I’d ever seen, being mostly knotted tubers or bulbous mushrooms or shriveled berries, all in hues either dusky and dark or unnervingly bright. They seemed to have been cultivated to send one clear message to any onlooker:Do not put this in your mouth.

And yet Ana ate them, carving off slices and stuffing them down her gullet. She gobbled down the foul things, tasting each sampling, before then moving on to the eggs. The Apoths had provided us with dozens of them in many sizes and sporting a spectrum of shells—“We use their whites to cultivate many reagents,” Malo confided in me, “and some species prove better than others”—and Ana began sending Malo back and forth from the fire, bringing her hot pans of sizzling yolks with mustard-colored whorls.

Yet neither the vegetables nor the eggs could possibly compare to the meats. The Apoths, having been pressured to provide her with the most exotic edible fleshes they possessed, had apparently taken this as an opportunity to dispose of their less desired specimens. Most of these samplings sat suspended in cloudy fluids in jars, and each time Ana popped one open and fished out a strip of flesh (A leg? Some animal’s face? A clutch of intestines? I dared not guess) I turned away and stopped up my nose to ensure I caught not a whiff.

And yet she ate these, too. Ana ate, and ate, and ate, carving offcurls of meat, slicing the skins of roots and rubbing them in oils, and even once cracking a raw egg and sucking the fluid straight from within. Her appetite was endless and abominable, so much so that Malo—she who had so casually wandered through the reeking ossuary—gagged in disgust. Even when the Apoth courier brought her a pile of reports on Pyktis and his supposed death upon the Shroud, Ana did not stop her feasting: she nibbled, and chewed, and listened to me, a grin often splitting her face as if she could imagine no greater delight than this.

When I finally finished my account, Ana sat crooked in her chair, a dreamy look on her blindfolded face. One hand pawed the pages of the Apoth reports; the other danced along the table, until she dabbed a finger in one of the cloudier jars of fluid—this one an unsettling auburn hue—and sucked at it. I shut my eyes and focused on the scent of the fire in the stove.

“You sound rather pallid, Din,” said Ana with a faintly cruel tone. “Are you sure you’re well?”

“I will feel far better the second I am far away from this feast of yours, ma’am.”

“I second this,” muttered Malo. “I am unsure if all on that table is fit for consumption. I do not think you should even dump her chamber pot out nearby…”

“Oh, but this is an imperial tradition, children!” said Ana. “Exotic banquets were once a common sight in the ages of the first emperors. This was before the march to the sea, of course, and the conquering of the Titan’s Path. In those now-faded years, the ancient Khanum feasted before battles and holy days, and debates, and celebrations, and games. The courts and clearings would fill with dancers and the sacred smokes of thuribles, and they would light their silvered fires. Then came tables laid with many dishes and meats, and all the blessed Khanum sated themselves before they put their minds and bodies to great works.” She paused in her dining and said, “Though these works were not great enough to stem their decline and eventual extinction, of course.” She speared a lump of pinkish root and gobbled it down. “Such feasts are now unknown in the modern Empire. Andperhaps that is a good thing! For those were savage days, for savage folk. And today, we are a far better people—are we not?”

“If folk such as Pyktis still lurk among us,” said Malo, “I am unsure.”

“A fair point, perhaps,” purred Ana. “Let us get to the task of eliminating him from our ranks, then! Malo—I assume your wardens shall search the canals more thoroughly now, yes?”

“Of course. I have my best people combing the jungle now about the warped clearing, since that was apparently where this Pyktis dwelt most.”

“And if they find any sign of him?”

“They shall send up a flare right away. But there is nothing yet. All we know is what we’ve found thus far.”

“Mm,” Ana said softly, and fell silent.

I hazarded a glance at her and studied the pile of parchments in her lap. “Have you found anything of use in what the Apoths sent us on Pyktis, ma’am?”

“I have found much,” sighed Ana. “But of use, I am unsure.” She leaned back and recited aloud, “Sunus Pyktis, approximately aged thirty-two, exact birth date unknown! First registered in Ta-Rath, capital city of the Rathras canton. Initial Iyalet scores placed him in the best Rathras Apoth academies, developed his arts working in the ossuaries there. Much information, yes, but little interesting! The only unusual thing I saw was a note from a Rathras registrar stating he thought the boy’s birth year was inaccurate, for he seemed far older than the listed birth year of 1097. Yet this tells us nothing aboutthe man! Did he prefer sotwine or grain brew? Was the fellow a virgin? Did he know how to fluently speak Pithian? Might he harbor a few mutinous thoughts about the Empire’s adoption of Yarrow? We still know terribly little.”

“What of his supposed death?” I asked.

“Oh, that is far grislier, and far more interesting!” said Ana eagerly. “Listen to this, children! Our dear Pyktis supposedly perished during an incident in an extraction, trying to tap the titan’s marrow with two other officers. It seems there was some contaminant on oneof the officers’ suits while working the extraction. A light dusting of tree pollen, they think—which shouldnothave been there, given all the cleaning and treatments done to their algaeoil suits. Thekanisplashed upon them.” She picked up a strip of fat from some grotesque specimen, stuffed it into her lips, and chewed noisily. “The pollen was transmuted, and grew rapidly, penetrating the suit…”

Malo shuddered. “So thekanifound living flesh.”

“Correct! This gave way to more transmutations—I imagine a raging storm of bone and ligament—which then killed all three augurs inspecting the carcass. Or so the Apoths thought.” Her greasy digits danced over one sheaf of parchment. “The damage was catastrophic. An entire cleansing bay of the Shroud ruined for years. Yet—how did Pyktis escape this end? I cannot say, but…I will speculate he may be even more brilliant than we thought.”

“Do you think he can be caught?” Malo asked. “Or do his abilities put him beyond our reach?”

“Ah, there you forget one of the foremost rules of the Empire, girl,” said Ana. “An augmented person is still a person—even the fabled, lost Khanum!—and thus they are weak in predictable ways. No, this fellow is not all logic, and his mind is not all wheels and gears. Our man is on amission.And he has been for a very long time, I think.”