Page 106 of A Drop of Corruption

“Of course,” sighed Ana. “Even if I could give you his exact description, Your Majesty, even one so precise that it would make identifying him a simple thing…well, it may do little good. It seems he is so adept at changing his likeness that he could always appear as someone else entirely. I can give you no more advice than to step with caution, have your food and wine tasted, and do not sleep unguarded. In the meantime, I shall pursue my own inquiries in the city.”

“And you shall share what you know?” asked the prince. “You will tell me what you find of this man?”

“Of course, Your Majesty.”

“Then I thank you,” he said gravely. “If you can give me anythingprecise, I can call my people to action. But until then, I can do no more than pray for luck and the kind attentions of the fates.”

—

Malo and Ispoke little as we worked with the Yarrows to harness the Treasury horses and lead the shaken axioms from their captivity. Prificto Kardas was now somewhat conscious but still had to be carried out in a sheet, his face dappled with broken blood vessels. Once the Treasury carriages had departed, we loaded into our own and followed.

Still we did not speak. The death of Gorthaus hung over us like a cursed blanket from a folktale, bewitched to bring sickness: both because of the awfulness of her murder and the awareness of how it had robbed us of so many answers.

“Din,” said Ana finally. “Tell me all you saw of Darhi’s interview. We’ve not had time to discuss that yet.”

I did so as quickly as I could, sniffing at my vials. When I finished, Ana asked, “So Darhi had a verystrongreaction, Malo, when he was asked about the Treasury negotiations?”

“He did, ma’am,” said Malo. “The scent of his sweat changed, and I swear I felt his pulse leap within him. Very strange, I think, to have the negotiator react so when asked a simple question about his negotiations.”

“Because, I assume,” said Ana softly, “his negotiations are not simple at all. There are secrets there as well, I feel. The question is…are they known to Pyktis? Do they matter? Or are they mere ephemera, in this most complex of places? I shall have to think on it.”

We rumbled along in silence, with Ana’s face turned to the window. For a long while, she did nothing but sit there, hardly breathing. She only shifted once, when she emitted a discomfiting, glottal click from her throat; then another. I wondered if she was so dismayed by our investigation that it quite literally choked her, but I did not think so: this clicking seemed a very different thing.

Then she began to tremble, yet it was strange. The entirety of her body did not quake, but rather she shook in distinct, isolatedsegments: the twitch of a muscle in her shoulder, then the flutter of a cheek; a quaking in some ligament of her neck, then a quiver in her thigh. I studied her, this pale, skeletal, shivering figure sitting bent upon the carriage seat, and for some reason I began to feel distinctly uneasy. While Ana often did many queer things, I had never seen her behave like this. Perhaps she truly was unwell from so much exposure to the wider world.

She finally spoke, yet her voice was again strangely deep and resonant: a different voice entirely, almost. “Did I ever tell you, Din,” she said softly, “of the case of the cooper in Branilin?”

“I don’t believe so, ma’am.”

“It was an investigation I consulted on, some years ago,” Ana continued, still in that queer, deep voice. “Three young boys murdered in the countryside there, over the course of six months. They were found lying in open fields, spoiled and sullied. They were from different homes, found in different places, taken at different times. No one could make any sense of it—until afourthboy was found, bricked up in the wall of an old house, his body dashed with lye. And so we wondered—why was this one treated differently? Why would the killer work so hard to hide him? But then, the answer was obvious…”

The rumble of the wheels. The shiver of the trees against the dark sky.

“Because the killer was familiar with him,” I said.

“Exactly,” said Ana. “The killer had apersonal connectionto that one, so he felt compelled to hide him deeper. Once we knew this, we found the killer quickly—the dead child’s uncle, a lowly cooper, whose mind was corrupted beyond description.” She leaned back in her carriage seat. “I do not know why Pyktis has chosen to kill the king. But…he has worked veryhardto obscure his movements about this deed, has he not? No one knows how the poison got in that cup. No one has seen any hint of the man in those halls. He even made himself vulnerable, emerging from the shadows to poison Gorthaus. So much effort! Which makes me wonder, for this one…”

“If Sunus Pyktis has a personal connection…to the king ofYarrow?” asked Malo.

“It may be so,” whispered Ana. “It may indeed be so.”

The mai-lamps shuddered outside as we made a turn, and then the beryl-tinted lights of Yarrowdale congealed in the distant darkness.

“When we return to the city,” said Ana, “I want you both to go through every possession Gorthaus ever touched, be it in a vault or in her chambers. Perhaps there is some clue as to where our six crates of poisonous reagents now lie.”

“What shall you do in the meantime, ma’am?” I asked. “Is there any report or meal or aid I can give you?”

A gleam of her smile in the dark. “A kind thought, Din. But no. I will wait for Kardas to awake. Then I will summon you both…and Thelenai. For I shall have much to discuss with all of you about the path ahead—which only narrows, I feel, toward most unpleasant places.”

Chapter 39

It was barely morning by now,but the Treasury bank was already open and serving its many customers. Malo and I discovered that Gorthaus had kept only the one vault in her personal name—Signum Tufwa, the engraver there, sniffily told us that all imperial clients were restricted in this manner to avoid fraud—yet all we found within was some rather mundane jewelry, documents and sigils of transport, and letters from her family. No matter how Malo sniffed or squinted at any of it, none of it seemed of import.

Abandoning this, we returned to the leaning tower in Old Town and searched her quarters. Like those of most engravers, her room was spare, neat, and tidy: there was her pikis on the windowsill full of tinctures, her trunk of clothing in the corner, a poche hanging from the door containing a handful of talints, and a bottle of kir-mite eggs for the cleaning of clothes.

For a moment we just gazed about, taking in the space. Then my eye fell upon a handful of scratches in the stone floor, just before the corners of a small bookcase beside her bed.

I pointed to it. Malo cocked an eye and said, “It can’t be that easy.”