Page 84 of A Drop of Corruption

“Is she mad?” Malo asked me. “For I resent her for pouring such wild suggestions into my mind, and then asking me to sleep!”

“She is mad,” I conceded. “But…not often wrong.”

She shook her head. “My dress uniform…by hell, mydressuniform? Do you know how unthinkable such a thing is for we wardens? We are accustomed to the wild, and little else!”

“I would get used to it. I suspect we shall soon be taking part in many unthinkable things.”

“Fucking hell,” said Malo. “I will do your immunis’s tasks, and then I shall find company less gloomy than you, Kol!” She stormed over to her wardens and rattled off a few angry lines of Pithian to them. A few of them swept down the street toward the scribe-hawk roosts, while the rest broke up, most of them following Malo toward a nearby sotbar.

“She did say torest!” I called after her.

Malo flapped a hand at me. “I did not ask for your comment!” she snapped.

I smoked my pipe and watched them go, bemused, yet one warden lingered, watching me.

Sabudara approached me slowly, her footsteps careful, her expression somber, her eyes studying me carefully.

I raised my pipe to her. “Good evening,” I said.

“Whole?” Sabudara asked. “Healthy?”

“Healthy enough, I suppose.”

Her green gaze darted to Ana’s door, then back to my face, and she took a step closer. “That was,” she said in her stilted standard, “hard talk you had?”

“We have no other kind these days, it seems.”

We stared at one another for a moment.

“Much trouble, then,” she said.

“Yes,” I said. “Much.”

She took yet another step forward. I noticed a bright, reckless look in her eye. “Company?” she asked.

I studied her, tempted but uncertain. “Oh. I…don’t know,” I said.

“No?”

“No. I have seen many horrors in the past hours, Sabudara, and many of them cling close to me. And I am weary beyond words.”

She rolled her eyes very slightly—He cannot really imagine I could translate that—and took another step forward. “Company—yes?” she asked. “Or no?”

I sighed and looked her over once more. Her face was smooth and bright in the blue of the mai-lamps, and much cleaner than I recalled: a likely side effect of all the Apoths’ cleansings, I supposed, for my own skin was softer and more fragrant than it’d been in many months.

Ana had told me to rest, true. But, really, a shame to waste such soft, aromatic skin.

I glanced back at my closed door and imagined my empty, silent rooms waiting for me. I did not often yearn for female company in this fashion, but Sabudara was a lovely thing, and far lovelier than what a night of stifling silence offered, especially with all the awful things now boiling in my head.

I opened the door to my rooms and stepped aside. She smirked, cocked an eyebrow, and strode inside without another word.

—

I dreamed thatnight that I walked the jungles, the canopies high and whispering above me, the starlight cold and shivering. I came to a mirrored pool of black water and saw a fluttering green column arise from its middle, the waters rippling as it climbed into the sky; then it halted, and its emerald skin unfolded like a flower, and I beheld within a figure in pale dress, clad in a white, skull-like helm. They turned to me and beckoned, calling me forward into the waters. I took a step, feeling the cold slosh of the lake against my ankle…

Then I heard the bells and awoke.

So deep had my dreaming been, and so abrupt my waking, that it took me a moment to orient myself. I lay naked across my mossbed, which was soaking with sweat; Sabudara lay next to me, her bare back pressed to my belly, my arm cast across her side. I had no idea where my clothes and boots were, nor my bedsheets—and I had no idea where the sound of bells was coming from, or indeed if I was dreaming still.