Page 45

Chapter 45

We followed Torgay down yet another 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.”

A door, then a short passageway; then another door, and another short passageway.

“But most of all, do not tap, or beat out any rhythm before them. Nor should you hum, sing, or whistle any tune. That will agitate the augurs greatly, for they shall seek meaning and pattern in it. And when your two hours are done, they are done. No negotiations on that. Is that understood, sir?”

“Yes, Militis.”

“Very good, sir.”

Torgay took out a ring of keys, unlocked one last door, and gestured to me to enter. We passed into a small, dull, white stone passageway, lit by a string of blue mai-lamps. Three bronze doors were set on the left-hand side ahead. Besides these, the passageway was barren.

Torgay walked to the closest bronze door and unlocked and opened it. “You can enter, sir,” she said.

Bracing myself, I walked inside.

—

The little room was much like the observation cell I’d been placed in back in Yarrowdale, but larger: a thick, rippled glass wall split the space in two, with three plain wooden chairs on either side. Placed on each chair on our half were curious instruments: two plain wooden boards, set inside a small frame so there was a shred of a smallspan’s gap between them. Besides these, and the two mai-lamps glowing up above, the room was completely bare.

“Please take a seat, sirs,” said Torgay. “The officers will be with you shortly.”

We sat. The guards retreated and shut the door behind them, though I could tell by the shadows at the bottom that one stood outside, observing us through a slit in the door.

I eyed the glass wall. It looked to be at least two smallspan thick. “Will we, ah, be able to hear the augurs through that, sir?” I asked.

“We will,” said Ghrelin. There was a quaver to his voice now. “There are gaps in the ceiling to allow sound through. They are packed with moss to absorb contagions, so it will be faint—but we shall hear.”

“I see, sir.”

A silence passed.

“The Apothetikal Iyalet is actually the greatest consumer of glass in the Empire,” Ghrelin said suddenly. “Did you know that, Kol?”

“Ah—no, sir. But that makes sense.”

“Yes…the neutral, nonpermeable qualities of glass make it ideal for storing reagents. Though a tempered pane of this size is extremely difficult to create and ship.” He extended a hand to the glass, like he was imagining the caress of its surface. “A glass of this thickness, some two smallspan, perhaps more…I would estimate that this was tempered in Basiria, some hundreds of leagues to the south. Very fine sand there, of a most agreeable quality, and a proud and sprawling glassworks nearby.”

“I see, sir,” I said, puzzled by his enthusiasm.

“They heat the sand with blackwood until it is white-hot, then left to fine out, the bubbles weaving through its boiling puddles…Then it is layered and cooled, and bundled up in packings of moss from Qabirga, and shipped across the vast Lake of Khanum to Mycel—probably in spring, for that’s the period of calmest weather—and then down the Great River Asigis to here. I wonder if I see flaws in the glass…Some speck of seashell or earth that was lost in that sand, and then boiled into the tempered glass. What a miracle it is, to sit and stare through soil made transparent. What lake beach or valley in Basiria is it from? Kesy? Beik Enis? Layli? I wonder if I could smell it on the glass itself…”

I glanced sidelong at him. Though he’d acted strange before, now there was a feverish look to his eyes, and the words tumbled from his mouth so quickly they were nearly unintelligible through his helm.

The augury, I guessed. It had been working on him all this time, I’d suspected, but now it was at its zenith. I wondered what he was now, somewhere inside that suit.

Then there was a click of a door: not from our side but the other.

I looked up, and they entered the room.

—

The first striking thing about them was their clothing, if it was clothing at all. From their necks to their knees they wore not shirts nor jerkin nor hose, but rather what first appeared to be a shapeless, formless tangle of papers and parchments. I squinted and saw that the papers were attached to a set of underlying robes by string, or pins, or adhesives, and were not of uniform size or type: there were many colors and shades of paper, with some large and neat and others crumpled, and some no more than torn-off corners. All the papers were covered in scribblings and text and numbers, equations and calculations and paragraphs, all rendered in smeary ashpen.

They were notes, I realized. The two augurs made so many notes and had secured so many of them to their bodies that they had almost come to resemble sheep, their figures white and plump and rustling.

I studied the augurs’ faces as they entered. They were gray-skinned, like myself; yet they were not simply bald, but totally hairless, their heads completely depilated, like Ghrelin and Thelenai. Their faces were smudged with ash and ink, which made it difficult for me to determine their sex; but one was a woman, I thought, and the other a man. Though perhaps these terms meant nothing to beings such as they. Perhaps the augurs, like some folk of the innermost cantons, had dispensed with such concepts altogether.

The two augurs walked to the barrier and looked at me, their faces so close to the glass that twin flowers of steam bloomed below their nostrils. There was something inaccessible to their gaze, as if they did not truly have eyes but rather the images of eyes painted on stones sitting within their sockets.

The augurs stared at me for a long while before fumbling about in their coats of parchments. They produced a set of boards that hung from their necks by ribbons. Then they sat down before the glass, placed the boards in their laps, and then…

Tap-tap. Tap tap-tap-tap.

I watched as their fingers danced over the boards, their fingertips so dark with ashpen that they left smears of black behind.

There was a silence. Then, slowly, Ghrelin picked up one of the boards from our half of the room. He took a deep breath and tapped out a response. The design and framing of the boards made the taps quite loud.

For the first time, the augurs looked at him. Then they began tapping again, their fingers rapidly flying on the wood. Ghrelin responded, tapping back, and they drummed out another response. This went on for some time, and as it did, the moods of all three began to change, growing relaxed yet also excited.

They were adjusting themselves to one another, I thought. Like dancers moving with a new partner, trying to adjust to this person’s height and weight and speed, yet enticed by the newness of it all.

Finally the tapping ceased, and Ghrelin turned to look at me. His pupils were wide and dilated, and when he spoke, there was something misty to his voice.

“I will speak for them now,” he said. “As best I can. I will no longer speak for myself. Is this known?” The last three words were sharp and cold.

“Yes, sir.”

Ghrelin stood, walked closer to the glass, turned to face me, and sat on the floor. The male augur sat in a position over his right shoulder, and the female on his left. Ghrelin’s eyes closed within his helm, and all seemed to go dark within, like the man himself had vanished and only shadow remained.

The augurs studied me, their eyes wide and earnest, yet unknowable. Then the male one tapped out a message on his board.

Ghrelin dipped his head toward the male and said in a dreamy voice: “Iudex. They said an Iudex was coming to talk to us. But there’s a narrow shaping to your eyes, and an undercolor of pale brown to your dermis. Are you Tala?”

I looked at Ghrelin, confused. It took me a moment to adjust to the absurdity of the situation: the augur’s words coming out of Ghrelin’s mouth, like the man’s body was being used as his voice box.

Then the female began tapping. Ghrelin’s head dipped toward her, and when he spoke again his voice was slightly different: tauter, wryer, and without a trace of warmth. “Tala he is,” said the woman. “Fluctuations in the pupil. Slightest widening, the shift in the shoulders. He heard truth. This is a Tala man—and a young one, at that. He moves too quick.”

The male augur tapped again, and Ghrelin dipped his head back the other way and spoke: “Tala is far from here.” The augur rummaged in his paper suit and pulled out a single note tied to a string, held it high, and tapped again on his board. “Less than seven percent of all serving imperial officers in Yarrowdale are of Tala stock. This is known. Though these numbers are from some time ago…”

Then the woman, cold and harsh: “Mostly Rathras, and Kurmini, and Pithian here. Peoples who grew up by rivers, by the Apoth works. Old Empire folk whose tribes knew the domain of the emperors long before the march to the sea. Familiar with the smell of reagents and the scents of the smokes.”

The man: “You are unusual here. And an Iudex officer has never entered the Shroud before. This is known, here on the inner layer. We share. We remember.”

The woman, digging in her own suit, salvaged some measly scrap of smudged parchment and proudly held it high. Then she tapped, one-handed: “I have predicted the arrival of an Iudex conzulate soon. I have predicted this. The transition from Yarrow to Empire will come with pain. The presence of such a being is inevitable.”

“But even so,” tapped the man, “such a personage would not send one young Tala man to the Shroud, all alone. No, no. You are not part of that entourage.”

The woman dropped her note and cocked her head. “So why now? And why a Tala man, of all folk?”

Then the man: “But then…Tala lies so close to those hallowed grounds. The Titan’s Path, and the sea walls, and Talagray.”

The woman dipped forward, eyes wide and keen: “Have you served in Talagray, Iudex? Have you walked in the shadow of the sea walls, and the Path of the Plains, with its ancient cenotaphs and strange blooms?”

My suit suddenly felt very hot.

The ghost of a smile crossed the woman’s face. She tapped out: “He has. See the stillness to his gaze, the measured movements as he breathes within his suit? This boy is full of grafts—but he is not broken. There is steel in his eye and sand in his spine.”

“And his visit here was not planned,” tapped the man. “For the suit is not arranged well. Baggy at the knees and hips, tight at the shoulders. It was not grown for you—even though it takes but ten days to grow an algaecloth suit for a person…”

“So—why?” tapped the woman. “Why is such an accomplished Iudex officer coming here, so quickly, and so unplanned? Unless…something very wrong has happened on the shore.”

“Murder. Death.”

“Disaster. Catastrophe. Tell us. Which is it?”

“Tell us, please, Iudex, tell us.”

I watched as Ghrelin twitched where he sat, like he was possessed by the figures on the other side of the glass. No less unnerving was the experience of listening to these two, my eyes flicking back and forth as one spoke, then the other, an alternating volley of taps and words.

“I am here,” I said very carefully, “to ask about a man who served with you as augur some time ago.”

The two augurs slowly turned to look at each other. The meaning of their gaze was unreadable to me, but they held it for a long moment. Then they turned back, and the woman tapped out a short, simple message.

Ghrelin spoke for her: “Are you here to ask of Sunus Pyktis?”

My blood flushed hot. I tried not to let my eyes react too much.

“Yes,” I said evenly. “How do you know this?”

Another long silence. The augurs sat there, inscrutable. Then the woman dug in her suit and held up a tiny scrap of paper covered in scribblings before tapping again on her board.

Ghrelin spoke for her: “This was known, Iudex. This was predicted. We have projected that these events may come to pass.”

“How did you predict this?” I asked.

The woman shook her head and replaced the note within her suit. Then she tapped again: “He lives. He lives. Yet how is this so?”

“I cannot tell you,” I said. “I am here only to ask about his service in this place.”

More tapping from the woman: “We will tell you about his service here, if you tell us of his acts in the world beyond.”

Then the man: “For his service here was strange, and troubled. Though most could not see it, we did.”

“When he perished,” tapped the woman, “we thought it wrong, even then. Such a clumsy mistake, such a blundering—from Sunus Pyktis? The golden child who could do no wrong?”

Then the man: “The augur whom all marveled at? Brightest among the bright, most brilliant among the brilliant?”

The woman said: “No.”

The man said: “No.”

“It was wrong. All of it, wrong.”

“This we knew. This was known.”

The woman leaned close, her nose nearly touching the glass. “And when we were told the Iudex was coming to talk to us, and only us…”

The man then: “Yes. He has been found. He lives.”

The woman: “We have been ready for you, Iudex. We can say much. Just—tell us. What has he done out there? Is he safe, and whole?”

I watched as their fingers fluttered out these final messages. Then they went totally cold and still, as if refusing to grant me any hint of information.

Yet I noted: they were concerned with Pyktis’s safety. They did not think him a murderer or a criminal, and had not yet contemplated that I was here because of some act he had done.

I wondered what to do. Then I realized: all this felt rather familiar, didn’t it? Didn’t I know very well how to deal with a person so ravenous for information?

I said, “Aren’t you wise enough to determine the answers by what I cannot say, as opposed to what I can?”

Their faces flickered: I caught a flash of anger, perhaps. Then the woman tapped, and when Ghrelin spoke, his voice was cold and resentful: “Flirtatious. A tease. I dislike this.”

More tapping from the man, and Ghrelin said, “He has been told the rules, yes. Swallowed them up, swilled them about. How foul.”

“Thelenai has gotten to him,” said the woman. “Told him not to tell us a thing. Cruel, cruel Thelenai.”

“Cruel, cruel Thelenai,” said the man. “No more, nothing new. Instead we shall read only innards, and nerve clusters, and no more.”

The woman: “Bones and sinew, veins and viscera.”

The man: “Blots of blood and strings of membranes.”

The woman: “Why do you condemn us to such a fate? You ask of us and we shall ask of you. It is only fair.”

I stayed silent, wondering if I should ask another question or wait it out. In many ways, this was rather like how I often dealt with Ana, though the augurs seemed more alien than erratic.

Then the woman cocked her head and tapped out: “Oh…do you see that?”

I waited and did not move.

The woman tapped again: “I do not like how he blinks so little. Such a paucity of eye movement. Does this Tala man seem… accustomed to us?”

The man grew excited: “Does he? I think so, yes. We startle him not at all, and he moves so little.”

“Has he met augurs before?” said the woman. “Has he dallied in their company so? How could that be, if augurs are only here, and no Iudex has ever come to this place?”

The man: “Has he met an augur, or…” He cocked his head. “…or something like an augur?”

The woman: “Tell us, boy—have you? Have you held parley with a being akin to us?”

I swallowed, disliking this shift in the conversation. I did not wish for them to ask me about Ana, who suddenly—startlingly, in fact—did seem very similar to them. If they grew too interested in her, I felt sure they would eat up the whole of our time asking about her.

I remembered the rules Thelenai had said: I was not to answer any of their questions or listen to their predictions.

But I needed to say something, now. Something startling that would send their augmented minds barreling down another path entirely.

Time enough to dispense with the rules, then.

I said, “Pyktis lives. He means great harm. I must know more of him to stop it.”

The augurs blinked in unison at that. Again, they shared a cryptic glance. Then they began tapping, and Ghrelin shuddered as he spoke for them.

The man, now worried: “Great harm…this cannot be. Not Pyktis.”

The woman: “Sunus Pyktis was a troubled thing, a tortured man, but…he was not a villain. This was not predicted. I cannot fathom this.”

I said nothing.

The woman, tapping slower, quieter: “He means truth. His eyes do not waver. He thinks Pyktis a criminal thing.”

The man: “I cannot comprehend this. Not from our Pyktis. Not from the man I once called friend and brother.”

The woman, her tone sharp: “Called him such we may have—but he never called us so. Not in his heart.”

Another silence. I sensed consternation now.

They began tapping again. Ghrelin, shuddering, shivering, spoke once more.

“We will tell you of Pyktis,” said the woman. “For though he was a puzzle to us, a thing lovely yet unknowable, we…we worry now.”

The man, soft and tremulous: “If we were wrong about him, then all our predictions, all our calculations…they now sit askew.”

The woman shook her head and tapped out: “It cannot be. We are his last defense, then. He was difficult to know, but we knew him best—and we know he must be innocent of whatever you imagine.”

The man: “What do you wish to know, Iudex?”

“All you saw of him,” I said. “Start at the beginning, please.”