Page 37

Chapter 37

Gorthaus stared at Ana, her eyes wide in her gaunt face. In this smoky, gloomy chamber, she had the look of a wandering eidolon in a crypt. Finally she moved, her right hand creeping back to her left arm, where she anxiously massaged the flesh above her elbow. “I don’t…I’m not sure I quite understand you, ma’am,” she said. “Surely you—”

“Perhaps you need simply listen, then,” said Ana. “For I find myself in a storytelling mood, and I think I’ve a fascinating tale to tell. It is a story of corruption, betrayal, and murder. It is most hideous, really! Are you ready for it?”

Gorthaus gazed at her, incredulous, then looked to me as if seeking support. I simply watched her, engraving her movements, carefully recording how she responded.

“I shall begin thusly,” said Ana. “The Imperial Treasury delegation has been meeting with the court of Yarrow for many years now. Over a decade, at least! And off and on, there have always been petty smugglers and pirates marauding about in the swamps. But in the last two years, things changed rather drastically. A few of these smugglers got very organized. They got coordinated. And they got a lot deadlier. The reason for their success was that the person running them was simply a genius at prediction. This fellow could comprehend so much with just a tiny portion of observations! Give him the right details, and he’d know which barge to rob, and when, and how.”

She sat back in her chair, adjusted her blindfold, and continued: “Yet before he could do any of that, he needed someone to first get him at least some of these tiny observations. He needed a contact within the Empire, in other words. The Apoths, of course, wouldn’t do—they were guarded against such plots, and only doled out information at the last minute—so he needed someone else. It was then that he had a very clever idea, as he was so wont to do. What if he corrupted someone at the Treasury ? The Treasury, of course, has very limited insight into the Apoth works…but what if the Treasury delegation was stuck up at the top floor of that very high tower back in Old Town? Because you can see quite a bit of the bay from the top floor, can’t you?”

Gorthaus’s face was still as stone. Her fingers continued working on her left arm, squeezing the triceps and deltoid, her face occasionally cringing as if pained.

“So!” said Ana, grinning. “Everyone might think the Treasury delegation had been put in that shitty old tower because the king of Yarrow wished to punish them, but…why, if you looked out the right window in the tower, you’d see all the movements of the Apoths, night and day, wouldn’t you? If our genius smuggler got these tiny observations—which ship went to which brewery, which dock, and when—well, he could predict so much, and steal all he wanted! And the perfect candidate to do this task, of course? Well, an engraver. Someone who could remember everything they saw perfectly. ”

Gorthaus did nothing. Her face remained perfectly stoic.

“Yet the tricky thing was then getting all these observations to this genius smuggler,” said Ana. “For the swamps and the canals and the jungles are quite a long ways from Old Town! So he needed a third actor—a liaison, in essence. Someone to take these observations and smuggle them out to the swamps. He found just such a person, a very useful one who had frequent contact with the Treasury folk—yet this liaison left a very distinct pattern. For I noticed…in all their months of raiding and piracy, the smugglers never conducted a raid in the first week of the month. And, most strangely, that was exactly when the Treasury delegation met with the court of Yarrow in the High City.” She grinned. “Because that’s when the exchange took place, didn’t it? The liaison for these smugglers is someone here at court.”

Gorthaus’s eyes danced about: calculating, perhaps, what she could do now to affect her fate.

Ana readjusted the folds of her dress. “I wasn’t sure it was you, at first, actually. Originally, I thought it was Kardas, for he’s seemed so useless here in Yarrow! But then, just earlier today, I asked you a question about all the passageways connected to the room where the king was poisoned.” She snapped her fingers. “Din—what was her answer?”

My eyes shook, and I recited it: “ There is a door to the south, which takes one back to the great hall. Then there is one facing west, which takes one to the reliquary. From that chamber you can return south to the great hall, or go west to the king’s private chambers, though his bedchambers are upstairs. ”

“And yet,” said Ana, grinning, “both the prince and Pavitar told us that no imperial before us has ever stepped foot in the reliquary! So how could you have such a familiarity with the passageways of the king’s hall…unless the smuggler’s liaison here has, perhaps, held secret meetings with you in many sacred places?”

Gorthaus whimpered softly, now rubbing her left arm from wrist to shoulder.

Ana leaned forward, her face bright with a strange hunger. “Here is the crux of it, girl,” she said. “You can tell us all you know now, right now. Then I can be lenient on you. But if you withhold, we will return to the city, and search all your vaults and chambers and what have you, and find all the rotten money that has tumbled your way, and prove your guilt. And then I’ll give you nothing—save the noose, and a thief’s death.”

“But…” stammered Gorthaus. “But I…I don’t know anything about who killed the king!”

“I didn’t think you did,” said Ana. “My concerns lie elsewhere, for now. Because this smuggler has stolen six crates of reagents that are tremendously dangerous. So much so that they threaten the whole of the Empire. We have searched the swamps but have found only corpses. I think these six crates are now in the possession of his contact here at court—his liaison, who slipped him all your observations about which barge to rob, and when.”

Gorthaus’s face gleamed with sweat in the firelight.

“All I need is a name,” said Ana. “Give me the name of your contact here, girl, and I can save you.”

“I…I didn’t want anyone to die,” Gorthaus said, panting. “They didn’t say anyone would die. But then after the first attacks, they…”

“They blackmailed you, I am sure,” said Ana. “Threatened you with death or worse. But that is in the past. I need that name now, child, and then all can be set aright.”

“I…I want to know I’ll live,” said Gorthaus. Tears began to run down her cheeks. “I don’t want to get hanged for this. I want a…a contract, a deal, or I…”

“Just tell me, damn it!” hissed Ana.

Gorthaus choked for a moment, her mouth making curious shapes as she struggled to speak.

Then the sounds from her throat changed. She was not just stammering anymore. This was something else.

I stepped closer, alarmed: Gorthaus’s face was quite red, and her eyes were beginning to bulge. “Ma’am…” I said.

“Speak, girl!” whispered Ana furiously. “Tell me the name !”

Then Malo swooped forward. “Her hand. Fucking hell, look at her hand!”

“Her hand?” cried Ana. “What of her damned hand?”

I glanced down. Though Gorthaus’s right hand was fine, the fingers of the left were a dusky purple and were as swollen as fish sausage, so much so that the ring on her middle finger bit into the flesh. Gorthaus gazed down at her own hand, as if mystified. Then she gasped, choked, and slid from the chair until she lay upon the flagstone floor, quivering and trembling.

“What is this?” demanded Ana. She gazed around blindly. “What’s happening?”

Malo stooped over Gorthaus’s body and slid her knife from its sheath. With deft movements, she parted Gorthaus’s left sleeve and ripped it free from her arm.

I gasped. The flesh below had been transformed: her forearm and bicep were horribly swollen, bulging about the elbow until the joint resembled that of a well-fed infant. Yet one spot seemed worst of all: a bright, puckered little volcano sitting atop her triceps, surrounded by whorls of horrid, purpled flesh.

“She’s been poisoned,” said Malo.

“What?” cried Ana. “How?”

“A tiny stab, or a sting. But it’s kerel poisoning, ma’am, by the look of it. A very small dose. That’s why it took so long. But it’s surely worked its way back to her heart by now…”

I gazed down on Gorthaus’s pink, bulging face and listened to her breathing, which seemed to be growing shallower by the second. I recalled what Ana had said: It’s far worse if it is directly fed into the blood, though. If even the tiniest drop gets into your veins, no amount of medicine or aid can help you.

Ana shot to her feet and thundered: “Then he’s still here!”

“What?” I said, startled.

“He’s here, he’s in the goddamned building !” She blindly stumbled to the door, flung it open, and bellowed, “ Darhi! Darhi, get in here, damn it! ”

A flurry of footfalls, and Darhi arrived. His usual expression of frigid serenity dissolved when he saw Gorthaus lying on the floor. “ Savariga …” he murmured. “What happen—”

“Lock down the castle!” thundered Ana. “Lock down the building! Search everyone, everyone ! Our poisoner has struck again, right before our very eyes!”