Page 27

Chapter 27

Thelenai and Ghrelin walked to the end of the table and sat. Both of them appeared terribly shaken, but only Thelenai attempted to conceal it. Ghrelin, however, looked wan and frail, and indeed even more exhausted than last I’d seen him, and his face bore more powders and paints than before: a tragic creature, perhaps, determined to maintain himself even as he fell to pieces. I felt a brief, powerful desire to offer him protection.

“Before we begin…” said Thelenai. She stopped to clear her throat. “I would like it observed that I have obeyed your conditions in good faith, Dolabra.”

“Oh?” said Ana, puzzled.

“Yes! I have not had you arrested, though that is within my powers. I have granted you time with your signum, and I have brought Immunis Ghrelin, as you requested. But before you begin to badger him with questions, I must now insist you give me the name of this killer. Or the name of this person you think is this killer.”

“Certainly, ma’am,” said Ana. “To prove my case, I shall tell you how I came to it…for at first I honestly despaired of finding this man. You gave us a list of officers who had access to the safe that was robbed, and though Din traveled leagues and leagues to talk to them all, none were our fellow. Yet then I remembered…you did not truly give us a list of all officers with access to that safe.”

Thelenai blinked. “I did not?”

Ana turned to me. “Din—would you be so kind as to recall the commander-prificto’s exact words when she gave us that list?”

My eyes fluttered as I summoned up the memory—and then I understood.

“Oh,” I said softly. “She said she gave us the list of every living officer who had access to that safe…”

“Indeed,” said Ana. “I realized that the list you gave me did not include deceased officers who’d possessed access to that safe—assuming, of course, that the Apoths do not remove the permissions of the dead from the bank? Might that be true?”

Thelenai twitched. Ghrelin turned an unpleasant ashy color.

“Of course,” purred Ana. “And why would you? A lot of trouble to go to for a dead person…I found there were indeed a few deceased officers who’d possessed access to that safe—but one, I noticed, stood out.” She pulled out a single page of parchment. “This particular dead man operated in a position that granted him all the information needed to manage the madness our impostor has wrought thus far. This officer was transferred to Yarrowdale from the Rathras canton in 1124, to work on a very sensitive site—the Shroud. He worked there for just under three years before meeting his untimely end, which is described in his service record as an accident, and nothing more.” She sat back, fingers threaded over her belly like she’d just consumed a sumptuous feast. “I think our man’s name is almost certainly Sunus Pyktis. Immunis Sunus Pyktis. I think he is alive, and he is the primary perpetrator of all these horrors. Do you know him?”

—

There was a silence. Then, for the first time, Ghrelin spoke. “Pyktis?” he said, astonished. “You think…you think this mysterious killer is Pyktis ?”

“I do,” said Ana. “I take it you are familiar with this man?”

The two fell silent. Thelenai glanced at Ghrelin, but Ghrelin stared into the table, lost in his thoughts.

“ Do you know this Pyktis?” demanded Ana.

“Know…” said Ghrelin softly. “That’s a complicated word when it concerns any who work within the Shroud.” His fingers twitched in his lap; then his hand surfaced at the edge of the table and drummed a little tap tap—taptap-tap.

Ana cocked her head, listening carefully. I watched Ghrelin’s fingers dance. Just as before, when he talked of the Shroud, his fingers moved of their own accord.

“Why?” asked Ana, impatient.

“We now consider sensitive things, Dolabra,” said Thelenai. “Few discuss the workings of the Shroud outside of its veil. I am uncomfortable continuing.”

“Must you resist me even now?” sighed Ana. “The sea walls are sensitive things, and these I have seen and toured!”

“But I am still not entirely convinced of your theory,” said Thelenai. “You have found a dead officer upon a list who, if alive, might be capable of what you describe. But that is not evidence. That is possibility. I would need more.”

Ana thoughtfully sat back. I could see her mentally browsing through all the barbs she could hurl at them next.

“Are codes used within the Shroud?” she asked finally.

Ghrelin looked startled; Thelenai, however, remained stony. “Codes are used throughout the Empire,” she said.

“Are some of the codes visual ?” asked Ana.

A slight crease to Thelenai’s brow. Perhaps, I wondered, Ana was following the wrong lead. “Visual codes?” asked Thelenai. “As in, an alphabet? Or different characters? Or…”

“Or something like this,” said Ana. She plucked out the parchment of my drawings, slapped it on the table, and shoved it forward.

The effect was immediate: Thelenai flinched, her icy poise dissolving; Ghrelin stood and gasped as if Ana had just pulled another severed head from her bag.

“Oh, by the Harvester,” murmured Ghrelin. “Is it really him? But how could he…how could he be alive ?”

“Where did you get that?” demanded Thelenai.

“Din found it in the clearing,” said Ana. “On a big piece of leather, stuck in front of that instrument that turned fifty fucking people into brush and sedge in mere seconds. Do you know, I rather think our killer left it specifically for you two?”

Thelenai’s eyes rose from the parchment to stare at Ana in horror.

“Here,” said Ana forcefully, “is what shall now happen. You, Commander-Prificto, are going to start actually cooperating with this investigation as if we sat upon true imperial soil. You are going to tell me the truth—even if you do not wish to. And I don’t think you do, because I think you know you have done something very wrong. I suspect you believe you have done this wrong thing for all the right reasons—and perhaps you have!—but that is all moot now.” All the smugness vanished from Ana’s face, replaced by a cold, terrible fury. “It is moot, because someone from your house has slipped away into the jungle. He has gone into those trees, and he has reinvented himself, and he has now killed not only fifty Yarrow folk, but Sanctum knows how many Apoth officers, canal riggers, and imperial servants in the past two years! He may in fact be the most prolific murderer in imperial history, for all I fucking know! And though I don’t yet understand him, I know he’s not going to stop. This fellow’s got a taste for it now. He likes it. He’s practiced it, for years. And he is doing something, making something, playing some game—and I cannot unravel it until you tell me the emperor’s honest fucking truth. Am I clear?”

For a long while, nobody moved: Malo sat hunched in her chair, elbows on her knees, watching Thelenai and Ghrelin; Ana was leaning so far forward she was practically standing up, her chin stuck out like a battering ram; Ghrelin’s body twitched and shuddered, his fingers beating out a tattoo upon his hip.

Then Thelenai slumped, defeated. “I…I can’t tell you one piece,” she said softly. “For you to…to understand one piece, I would have to tell you all. I don’t know where to start.”

“Why don’t you start with the marrow, then?” asked Ana. “For that’s what this is about, yes?”

“Y-yes,” whispered Thelenai. She shut her eyes. “Come, Ghrelin. Let us tell them.”