Page 12

Chapter 12

I found the Treasury bank in no less of a state of pandemonium than the delegation’s tower. All bank business had been shut down, and dozens of laborers and officers were milling about in the street, making futile demands for their money. The guards at the door were so rattled that they first denied me entrance, but I finally forced them to look at my heralds, and they allowed me in.

I wound my way through the bank and found Kardas and his Treasury officers within the Iyalet vault, observing as a panicked Signum Tufwa slid out each vault box and weighed it on his fancy scales. Kardas paced about the vault in a small circle, arms crossed, occasionally biting the tip of his right thumb. The nervous tic had so completely taken him over that the nail of his right thumb now bore small indentations from his incisors.

“I don’t even know how it could have happened!” Tufwa was saying. “Our balmleaf locks don’t open if the privileged blood is even slightly decayed! It shouldn’t have been possible, it shouldn’t!”

Malo and two other Apoth officers lurked at the back of the vault. Judging from the sheer amount of mud and weapons on their bodies, I guessed they were wardens as well. Malo looked up as I approached. Her face was wan and taut, with no sign of her usual breeziness. “They are doing a basic check first,” she said. “He looks at all the boxes that were opened in the week before the tenth of Hajnal, to see if the weights of any have changed since then.”

“But so far,” said Kardas, “all seems true and proper.” He glanced at me sidelong. “Did your immunis really conceive all this just from hearing one day of your reports?”

“She did, sir,” I said.

“How amazing,” he said softly. “What an astounding woman. I almost regret hoping she’s wrong.”

We continued watching as Tufwa weighed box after box. The day stretched on and on, broken only by the click and clack as Tufwa slid the boxes in and out of their shelves. I idly wondered if Ana’s speculation about our impostor had been incorrect.

Then Tufwa placed one box upon the scales. He read its weight, then twitched, his long curtain of hair rippling.

I stepped close. “What is it?”

“Ah…” He peered at the scales, as if wishing he did not see what he now saw. “This…this box is…changed.”

“Changed?” asked Kardas. “Changed how?”

“It is four stone heavier than it was after it last received a deposit, sir,” said Tufwa.

“ Heavier? ” I said. “Someone has added something to it?”

Tufwa’s eyes fluttered as he summoned up his memories. “Yes. Though I do not know how. This safe was opened for a deposit on the second of Hajnal. It has not been opened since. Not…not by my memory, at lea—”

“Wait,” said Kardas. He darted forward, his white Treasury cape fluttering behind him. “This is not a Treasury box. It’s an Apoth box.”

“Wh-what?” said Malo, startled.

Kardas pointed to the sigil on the front: the drop of blood set in a hexagon. “See for yourself. It belongs to your Iyalet, not mine. Are we to presume that this man dressed up as a Treasury officer and committed murder and torture…but not for riches or money or talints at all, but…but for something in a single Apoth box?”

Malo stared at the safe as if the sight of her Iyalet’s insignia horrified her, but she said nothing.

“What was in it?” I asked Tufwa. “Do you know?”

Tufwa, trembling, shook his head. “I am permitted to know what safes are in use, and for whom, but not what is deposited. Too many confidential reports and materials are stored here.”

“Then who opened it last that you recall?”

Another fluttering of Tufwa’s eyes. “A…an Apoth Immunis. Rava Ghrelin, of the Medikker Fermentation Division here in Yarrowdale. He made the deposit on the second of that month. Bank protocol dictates we should summon him first before breaking open the box ourselves.”

I looked to Malo, who gave a panicked shrug. “No idea who the hell that is,” she said. “But that division does very serious work. Yet far more disturbing…that safe should have been even more secure than the Treasury box.”

“Why?” I asked.

“We Apoths don’t grant blanket access to our officers, like the Treasury does,” she said. “You want to be able to use our boxes in the Iyalet vault here, you got to give us individual tissue samples. Spit is easiest. But just in case you’ve got someone else’s spit in your mouth, we also ask for piss. Less likely to have someone else’s piss in their belly. Then we apply reagents to the samples, swab it on the balmleaf substrate for the safe, and it’s done. All this means that box should have been one of the most secured things in all of Yarrow.”

I realized why Malo seemed so dismayed. “And…it shows no damage? No panel removed, nor hinges severed?”

“Not that I can see.”

“So…it would seem someone simply came, pressed their hand to the balmleaf lock, and…it opened for them. Is that how it appears?”

“Yes,” she said faintly.

There was a long, uncomfortable silence.

“By hell,” said Kardas. “Are we to believe that this impostor appears to have had not only the blood privileges that allowed him to open a Treasury box…but also those of an Apoth? Specifically, for access to this one box?”

No one said anything.

“Then our impostor has…has a spectrum of magic blood within him?” Kardas asked. He laughed miserably. “A mix of them, like some kind of mulled wine, that allows him to open nearly any damned safe he chooses, no matter how it is warded?”

“That,” said Tufwa, “or he is the greatest bank robber I have ever heard of.”

I looked to Malo. “We need the owner of this safe here,” I said. “This Ghrelin. And we need him talking. If we can’t find him, we open the damned box ourselves.”

“R-right…” said Malo. She looked back at her two wardens. “Fetch him here. Tell him we have some questions about the contents of his safe, but no more than that.”

“And please check the other safes,” I said to Tufwa as they left. “It’s possible the man broke into them as well. I doubt it, but we will need to know.”