Page 17

Chapter 17

Ana cleared her throat. “First…I would like to confirm the nature of the material that was stolen, Immunis,” she said. “You told Din here that it was a new formulation of healing grafts, correct?”

Ghrelin nodded, his hands in his lap. “They were.”

“Can you tell us more about these grafts?” asked Ana.

“Well…they are very complex. For the diseases they cure are very complex.”

“I have a delight for complex things,” said Ana, grinning. “Indulge me.”

“Certainly,” said Ghrelin. “I shall try to explain…”

He began to speak, starting with the nature of these respiratory diseases: the way they inflamed the lungs and how these infections could rapidly progress in the very young and very old. He described the difficulty in trying to treat these infections, for though they all produced similar symptoms, they could be caused by any one of dozens of contagions or diseases, and each one required a specific graft to cure.

“I see,” said Ana when Ghrelin finished. She cocked her head, letting the silence hang. “And this is what the perpetrator killed, tortured, maimed, and deceived so many to steal?”

Ghrelin paused. His eyes danced uncertainly about the table before he sat back into a position of relaxed repose. “It was, ma’am,” he said.

“Why would he wish to steal such a thing?” asked Ana.

“I’ve no idea, save that the cures are very valuable. Perhaps that is why.”

“Did you have many colleagues working upon these grafts with you?”

“No, I did not,” said Ghrelin. “I worked alone.”

“I see…”

Ana then asked him the common stuff. Had he seen or heard of anyone unusual asking about his works, or heard of anyone else doing so? Witnessed any signs of tampering? Seen anyone following him, or found any correspondence missing?

“No, no,” he said, shaking his head. “There is nothing I can recall.”

Had he ever experienced any robberies before? she asked. Had any of his works been stolen, or been the subject of attempted theft?

Again, no.

“And what did you do before working upon these healing grafts?” asked Ana.

Ghrelin hesitated. Then he said quietly, “I worked within the Shroud.”

A loud silence filled the room.

“You worked within…the Shroud ?” asked Ana.

“I did, ma’am,” he said.

“Can you tell us about that, please?”

Commander-Prificto Thelenai raised a hand. “The Shroud is a very critical and delicate part of imperial infrastructure, Immunis. It is the sole source of the purest titan’s blood. We do not share much information about it, for that could make it vulnerable. I wish to know why you ask this.”

“Certainly!” said Ana. “The perpetrator appears to possess intimate knowledge of all the workings of Yarrowdale, but especially of Ghrelin’s projects. Thus, it’s possible that not only is the culprit an Apoth but perhaps one that Ghrelin has met before—though he might not know it. Ghrelin has also just said he worked alone upon his healing grafts, so the perpetrator likely did not meet him during these labors. Thus, Ghrelin might have met them in a previous station—including the Shroud.”

Thelenai glanced at her entourage. Her commanders looked back with their small, mistrustful eyes but said nothing.

“I consent,” said Thelenai. “But we can only offer you a limited testimony here.” She nodded to Ghrelin. “Continue, Immunis. Carefully.”

Ghrelin cleared his throat, then said, “Well, I…I worked upon the envelope, the veil of the Shroud. The thing that gives the installation its name. The veil absorbs and destroys most contagions as it comes into contact with them, airborne and otherwise. Without the veil, the, ah…the extraction of various critical reagents would be impossible.”

The sight of the Shroud flashed in my mind: huge and green and towering, and fluttering so strangely over the waters.

Ana picked up one of the percolator hoses, plugged it into her mouth, and took an enormous pull from it, the contraption whistling like a startled dove. Then she exhaled and said, “You mean, it would be damned hard to take a leviathan’s carcass and bleed it of all of its bloods and liquors without unleashing catastrophic contagion on all of Yarrow?”

“C-correct,” said Ghrelin.

“How does it manage this feat, Immunis?” asked Ana.

Ghrelin laughed wearily. “That is like asking how the emperor has lived to be four hundred and forty-one years old! It is a great achievement that calls upon many arts, and few can claim to know or comprehend it all. But in crudest terms, the Shroud is based upon a…a tissue found inside of the leviathans themselves.”

“The Shroud is made from a piece of the leviathans?” asked Ana.

Again, Thelenai raised a hand. “This is a question of great secrecy. I am afraid I cannot permit discussion of it.”

“Noted,” said Ana, grinning. “How long did you work inside the Shroud?”

Ghrelin hesitated. Then, very slowly, his hand crept forward on the table.

“For…for three years,” he said quietly. “That is the longest one can serve there.”

His fingers twitched on the table. Then his thumb, index, and middle rose high like a mantis about to strike, and then…

Tap-tap-tap. Taptap. Taptap-tap.

Ana’s head cocked very slightly at the sound of it. I saw the hint of a smile to her lips. She appeared to think for a moment, listening to the tapping. Then she said, “Tell me, Ghrelin…can you explain the Shroud to me? For I’ve heard many things about it, but never from an Apoth, and certainly never from an Apoth who actually worked upon it.”

Ghrelin’s fingers twitched away— Tap-tap. Taptap-tap-taptap-tap.

“I could…” he said quietly. “In broad terms.”

“Then please,” said Ana, “indulge me.”

I studied her, still grinning in her enormous cloud of smoke. She wished to keep him talking, I guessed; for when he talked of his time on the Shroud, he tapped, and she must have spied some value in his tapping.

“Well…it takes us about two weeks to move a leviathan carcass here, to Yarrowdale,” said Ghrelin. “We bring it into the bay, and we…we dock it alongside the Shroud, out there in the waters. And then we gather the veil about it.” He leaned forward, still tapping, his eyes bright with a curious light. “Each body is different, you know. No two leviathans are alike. We do not know why—we comprehend so very little about them, really—but there is always variation. And we at the Shroud have only a, a handful of days to look at the anatomy, to comprehend the structure of this new thing, before it decays beyond salvage.” He began speaking very fast, and tapping even faster. “There are layers and chambers to each one, you see, with different types of bloods within. And places where the blood is most corrosive, and chambers where it is purest.”

“Tell me about that,” said Ana softly.

He nodded eagerly, as if she’d stoked the fire in his mind. “The purest of titan’s blood—or qudaydin kani, as is the proper name—is powerfully metamorphic. When it comes into contact with a significant concentration of living tissues, it mixes with them, forcing a strange blending. Flesh becomes as leaf, and leaf as bone, and so on. All is warped. There are places in the plains about Talagray in the East, for example, where many leviathans have been felled, and many strange and awful breeds of flowers still spring from the blighted lands…”

I kept my face grim and stoic at that, for I had seen such sights myself.

“What do you mean by significant concentration ?” asked Ana.

“The very air about us is alight with a scant mist of life,” chanted Ghrelin, waving a hand. “But that is not enough. It takes a slight bit more. A dusting of fungi, a scraping of mold…Though tiny to our eyes, these are enough to induce a reaction from the kani. It is dangerous, but terribly valuable! And accessing it is hardest of all.” A wet gleam as he licked his lips, and he spoke still faster: “It…it comes to a question of parting flesh, of navigating this immense construct of bone and ligament and chitin, wending through the whole of its being until you find the one place, the one place where you ca—”

“Immunis,” said Thelenai softly.

Ghrelin stopped, abashed. The wild light in his eyes dimmed, and he cleared his throat and withdrew back into himself.

“We, ah, drain it of its most critical bloods,” Ghrelin finished quietly. “These we ship to the canals, to be fed through the orchards there to produce precursors and be further refined. The remainder of the carcass is hauled into the seas to the east, to sink, rot, and be lost.”

His tapping slowed, then stopped.

Ana sat with her head cocked. “This work sounds very dangerous, then.”

“Again—very,” said Ghrelin.

“Do you recall any colleagues who disagreed with it?” asked Ana. “Or held grudges against you, or it?”

“Why?” said Ghrelin, suddenly irritated.

“It is as I said. I am wondering if one of your colleagues from this era of your service might be our culprit.”

Ghrelin suddenly burst out in a wild titter of laughter. The other Apoths appeared startled by it, or perhaps embarrassed. I began to sense there was something that marked Ghrelin as different from the rest of them, including Thelenai, but I could not yet divine what it was.

“You will have to forgive me, ma’am,” said Ghrelin, still smiling. “But I don’t think you work with Apoths of our sort.”

Ana grinned back and took another long draw from yet another hose. “What makes you say that?”

“Because we are asked to suffer most,” said Ghrelin, “to provide the most. The alterations we provide, they…they not only keep the Empire functioning, but they make it far better. Even here, in Yarrow. I mean…” He sat forward. “Do you know, Immunis Dolabra, how many Yarrow children survived past the age of five a century ago?”

The other Apoths exchanged an uncomfortable look.

“I’m afraid I do not!” said Ana cheerily.

“Two of seven,” Ghrelin said. “Only two. Odds were that the other five perished before then. The families here had to have an enormous number of children just to sustain themselves. Now—can you guess how many of those mothers survived these births?”

Ana sucked at a hose again, wreathing herself in fumes. “Enlighten me, please.”

“A little less than two in three,” said Ghrelin. “Every pregnancy, every birth—for each one, the life of the mother amounted to little more than the roll of a die. Those children and mothers and fathers that lived went on to lead lives of starvation, and disease, and poverty, and violence. But today…” He put a finger in the middle of the table: a sole tap. “Today, six of seven children make it past the age of five. Today, four of five mothers survive childbirth. Today, though starvation and disease remain present in Yarrow, they are mere ghosts. Because of Apoths like myself, and those I served with, who labored, suffered, and perished within the Shroud. Thus, I cannot imagine that one of my colleagues from these labors might be the perpetrator of these horrid crimes. It is impossible.”

Ana nodded, still grinning, still awash in smokes. “Fascinating. I have just one last thing to ask of you.”

“Yes?” said Ghrelin.

“What do you make of the phrase— For those who sip from the marrow ?”

Ghrelin blinked very rapidly. “I b-beg your pardon?”

“Those words were written on a note the criminal left behind for us to discover. The full phrase was— For those who sip from the marrow, Te siz imperiya. Does this make any sense to you?”

I watched them all carefully. The Apoths beside Ghrelin had not moved much, but at this they became stiller than stone, their eyes fixed on indistinct points on the table, as if they’d just instructed their own bodies to go dormant. Ghrelin himself paused, a sheen of sweat now crawling across his brow. Then something steeled in his face, in his eyes, and when he spoke, his words were firm and controlled.

“No,” he said. “I am not familiar with that phrase.”

“And it does not seem to refer to anything you know?” asked Ana.

“Not at all.”

Ana nodded and shifted forward in her chair, mouth slightly open as if wondering how best to phrase what she had to say. She reached out, appearing to grasp another percolator hose—but then she raised her index and middle fingers and tapped very quickly on the table, a brief little tattoo: Tap-tap. Taptap-tap.

Ghrelin’s eyes shot wide. He stared at Ana’s hand, then up at her face, astonished. Ana appeared ignorant of his reaction, and instead grabbed the stimulant hose yet again and inhaled from it.

“There was a proposal about a decade back to find a way to do something with leviathan marrow, yes?” she asked.

Ghrelin was shaking very violently now. “I…I…I’m sorry?”

“A proposal, I said. About trying to take the marrow from a leviathan’s carcass. Does that sound familiar to you, Immunis?”

Ghrelin opened his mouth to speak, but Thelenai coolly said, “We cannot comment on any proposals or business concerning the Shroud, Dolabra. I have made that clear.”

My eyes stayed fixed on her face. Did I now see a worm of terror to the commander-prificto’s gaze?

Ana cocked her head, savoring the statement like one might a bite of a fine meal. “Fascinating,” she said. “Then I believe we are done. Thank you all for speaking to us. It has been most educational for me.”

—

After the interview was finished, Thelenai remained behind to speak with us.

“You will have to forgive Ghrelin’s passions,” said Thelenai quietly. “He is an ardent servant of the Empire, and he is still coming to terms with this crime.”

“I understand, ma’am,” said Ana. “The Empire’s servants are dedicated folk, in every Iyalet. Yet still I worry that Ghrelin has met our murderer sometime in his past. Would it be possible for you to send me his service record?”

Thelenai studied Ana for a moment. This close, her eyes seemed even greener than Malo’s. “Of course,” she said. “But you do not suspect Ghrelin of any misdeed, do you?”

“Not yet, no.”

“You should not. It’s very rare to have someone survive the Shroud and return to labor among us. Most go to live on the lands they are awarded for their service there. As such, Ghrelin is terribly valuable. I would not deny the emperor’s justice if he were to be suspected, yet…I feel he must be innocent in all this.”

“Let us hope so. Yet I have two more questions for you, Commander-Prificto, if you are willing,” said Ana.

“Certainly.”

“Why are there no engravers in this building?”

Thelenai’s eyes widened ever so slightly. “Ah. You have noticed. Yes—we bar all engravers from accessing the inner reaches of the fermentation works. Likewise, we permit no warden, nor anyone else with hearing augmentations, to draw near. The reason is that much of what we do here is experimental, and untested. Anything we make will take a long while to be approved for use.”

“And you worry about having an engraver walk your halls,” said Ana, “and memorizing every formula they see, and then secreting out something unstable to some illegal brewery?”

“Exactly.”

“Then,” said Ana, grinning, “can I tour the fermentation works, even if Din cannot? I would be most eager to see how advanced they truly are, for I am no engraver.”

Thelenai paused. “Well. To begin with, Immunis, you are wearing a blindfold. While this is not terribly unusual to me, given all the stimulative afflictions of altered folk, I am not sure what value a tour could offer you…”

“It is no issue! I am happy to walk and listen. And smell! That can tell me many things.”

“Yes. But.” Thelenai’s eyes flicked down to Ana’s scattered heralds and back. “The issue is, I am not sure how you are altered, Immunis. For though you seem no Sublime, Dolabra, I cannot help but suspect you have alterations of your own. Ones that are unmarked upon you. And that I find very strange.”

There was a tense silence. Ana’s predatorial grin did not waver at all.

“I cannot risk it,” said Thelenai. “Thus, I am afraid I will have to turn you down. Now. If you will excuse me, we have much to do in the wake of the robbery.”