Page 119 of A Drop of Corruption

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Ghrelin took meto a long stone passageway. “It sleeps, you see,” he whispered as we walked it. “Like a baby. Silent yet fitful, always threatening to wake.”

The hallway ended in a stonewood door that had been reinforced many times over, with a viewing hatch positioned in the center. I gazed at it, my skin crawling and my suit boiling with heat.

Ghrelin nodded to the hatch. “There it lies. Look! Look upon it and know that it is real.”

I walked up to the hatch, opened it, and peered through.

Within lay another curving, rippling spherical chamber wrought of stony fretvine, again lit by the swirling green light of the Shroud above. To my confusion, it appeared to be sleeting within the room: thick, white flakes danced about in the darkness, churning andswirling as they rippled through the green light.

“Sir,” I said. “What is…”

“Petals,” said Ghrelin. “Petals of the kyap tree blossom. They are light and plentiful—and shall be the first to warp, should the marrow’s containment fail. How many times I have looked within a chamber like this, and seen them change color, or grow heavy and fail to dance on the air. Then our prize’s bony cradle would bloom with curious growths, and sprout teeth and ribs, and then we were forced to burn the entire creation and await the next wet season. But look past the flowers now! See past their drifts, Kol!”

I narrowed my eyes, peering through the snowstorm of flower petals. Standing in the center of the chamber was a tall frame of stonewood, fifteen span wide and long. Hanging within it was a weblike array of thick, ropy, coiling shoots of a material that resembled ossuary moss, yet it had a metallic sheen to it. And there, in the middle of the spiderweb of shining moss, sat a growth: a lump, a curious, misshapen tumor, five span tall and wide, shaped almost like a calf’s kidney. It sat suspended in the web, entombed in the metallic moss, yet unless I was mistaken, very occasionally, the lump would…

Shake. Vibrate. Quiver. Like an egg just before its hatching.

“Do you see the moss?” whispered Ghrelin beside me. “How it shimmers? It is a breed we created specifically for this purpose, fed with iron deposits to line its bark, which already had the nature of stone. Only this can form the sheath that resists thekaniand the many alterations and mutations of the titan’s blood. And yet even still, it stirs. Do you see?”

The gleaming lump trembled again, like a lyre string gently plucked. A bulge emerged in the silvery carapace, like a bubble about to burst, but then it froze, and shrank, yet did not vanish.

“I do,” I said softly.

“In that shell lies the future, Kol. Some are so bold as to call it the Fifth Empire—a nigh sacrilegious thing, as new eras are only anointed at the death of an emperor! And yet, if he were here, I feel Emperor Daavir might agree…”

I pulled my eye away from the hatch and shut it, my blood buzzingin my veins.

“Thirty-two,” said Ghrelin to me.

“Sir?”

“Thirty-two augurs died to bring us that treasure,” he said. “And how I weep for each of them. But once the count was thirty-three…for we thought Pyktis dead, didn’t we, Kol? Yet now we know otherwise.”

I said nothing, haunted by the sight of the marrow suspended in the dark among the dancing flowers.

“Strange, that he intends to make a weapon of the thing he once fought to procure,” said Ghrelin somberly. “Our deliverance, but his armament. Now—are you ready to speak to those beings who secured that prize?”

Chapter 45

We followed Torgay down yetanother winding passageway, my suit now so hot it felt like I was being braised within a bladder. I struggled to collect my thoughts and prepare myself for how this interview would go.

“Will the augurs I speak to be in algaecloth suits and helms as well?” I asked.

“Oh, no, sir,” said Torgay. “The citadel of the Shroud is built in two layers. There is the outer layer, which is an operation section where personnel are required to wear warding garments at all times. Mostly only service personnel labor here. Then there is the inner. That is where all the most dangerous work occurs.”

“I’m not being brought into the inner layer, I assume.”

“No, sir. You cannot pass through without days of testing and observation. I am taking you to a review chamber on the north side of the inner layer of the citadel. There you will be able to speak to the designated personnel through the chamber’s glass wall, much like how you viewed the…ah, shipment.”

We turned again. By now I had lost all concept of direction and had no idea where we were.

“I do ask that you follow the policy for such an interaction, sir,” said Torgay. “Do not touch the glass wall. Do not remove your helmet or any component of your algaecloth suit.”

We took a flight of wooden stairs down, then a flight of metal stairs back up.

“Do not discuss anything personal with the designated personnel. Do not show them any personal items of your own. Do not shout, speak loudly, or move quickly before them. Do not mention the shoreside world or its developments.”