Page 46

Chapter 46

The male augur began to tap, and as he did, Ghrelin chanted in his dreamy, misty cadence, his head lolling back and forth as the words coursed through him.

“Small and secretive and strange, our order is,” said the man. “But if it were to have saints, surely Sunus Pyktis would sit among them, so wisely did he serve.”

“The stories were told to us when we first passed through the veil to serve,” said the woman. “For he was best and brightest of us. A man without peer.”

“Quiet and modest,” said the man. “Humble to the point of effacement.”

“Yet the stories were loud and grand, even if he was not,” said the woman. “It was Pyktis who pioneered the use of oli muk to bind the titan’s marrow. Winding it up in ossuary moss and smuggling the secrets of their flesh away for us to study.”

“He did not invent it,” the man corrected her gently. “But he made the most advances with it.”

“He guided it through their tissue like a needle through cloth,” the woman said.

The man’s wide, shallow eyes danced up and down my figure, and he tapped: “You know of the marrow. I feel you may have even laid eyes upon our prize. You know that when the wet seasons are high, and the Legion fells a titan, we augurs wend through the depths of these great, rotting entities, passing through chambers and veins and hollows like the deepest of mines.”

“It is we who read their bodies, their flesh,” tapped the woman. “Like dowsers in the steppes, sensing sleeping water beneath a curl of clay. This is no easy task. It takes many minds, and powerful minds at that, to read the flesh of the leviathans.”

“We work in groups,” said the man. “ Polytia is the word—groups of three, who live together, labor together, learn together.”

“In a polytia we become one,” said the woman. “One mind, one stream of thought, one entity.”

“And Pyktis was a member of your polytia?” I asked.

The woman’s hands tapped out a message, and Ghrelin breathlessly translated: “He was our eldest, our prificto-polytia. We were his juniors, serving with him during his third, final year. He was to drum the beat of our lives. It was an honor to serve with him.”

Then the man, cautious, anxious: “Yet…we augurs are skilled at learning the natures of folk. This is most important in a polytia. To doubt your colleagues while wandering a titan’s breast…that is certain death. But when it came to Pyktis…”

“Pyktis was bright, brilliant—but also unreachable, unknowable, ” said the woman. “He would give us truths, offer us data—but it was only data. Information. Facts.”

The man: “Where he was born—in Ta-Rath, in Rathras, far to the southeast.”

The woman again: “His mother, beloved and beautiful, who had perished when he was a young man.”

“His desire, endless and passionate, to bring betterment to the Empire—healing and growth and restoration.”

“His perfect marks, perfect scores, perfect service record. It was data. Records. It was not knowledge. Not comprehension. ”

The man, wistfully, dreamily: “To serve with him was akin to loving a person made of glass. So difficult to perceive. So still, so cold, so hard to the touch.”

They lapsed into a meditative silence.

Yet I noted: love? They had loved him?

I recalled what Ghrelin had told me: Relationships there are…very different.

“He lived a story, then,” I said. “And hid his true self—is that it?”

The augurs frowned. The woman riffled through her coat of notes and produced yet another smeary piece of parchment, which she studied like it was sacred script. Then she absently tapped on her board with one hand, and Ghrelin translated: “No…not entirely. For sometimes he did show one side of himself so hidden. During the days of remembrance.”

I recalled Ghrelin mentioning these as we toured the reagent crates. “The days of remembrance…What are those?”

“It is a holy day upon the Shroud, every six months,” explained the man. “It is on these days that we memorialize the ones we have lost. Augurs and officers killed in our duties, laboring away on the carcasses of these great mysteries.”

“Devoured by contagion,” tapped the woman. “Sickness. Madness. Plague.”

The woman: “During these holy days, we read the names of those who have perished in the past months. We thank them for their service, and pledge our love, to remember them always. And it was on these days, only these two days that I saw, that Pyktis…wept.”

“Wept?” I said.

The man tapped rapidly: “Yes. He wept. Wept with anguish, wept with agony. I have never seen a person weep so.”

“It pained him,” said the woman. “So great was his pain that I asked him of it. He said to me— Does your family think you shall die in this place? I said I did not know, but I assumed they had accepted my fate, whatever it was to be. I had chosen to serve, after all. He thought on this, and then said— My father expects me to die here. I said that could not be so, no father could truly expect such a thing. But then he…” A pause in her tapping. Then: “He grew angry. He grew so angry at this comment, and he withdrew, and we could not find him.”

“He disappeared?” I asked.

The woman issued a single set of taps: “Yes.”

“But the Shroud is a contained place, yes?” I asked.

The man tapped in response: “Contained, yes, but also enormous, especially here on the inner layer. When we two searched for him, we found nothing. He returned to us, eventually. Yet he was cold and aloof, and we feared to ask of it.”

The woman: “After that, this behavior became more frequent. He would disappear to some place within the Shroud, some place we could not find. When he returned, he would be moody and distant. We could not comprehend it.”

The man limply tapped upon his board, and Ghrelin slowly translated: “We thought the culprit was the end of his term. Too much augury. Too much time on the Shroud. The mind breaks down.”

The woman: “It is why we serve only three years. The personality undergoes shifts. Often dangerous ones. It is like the Khanum of old, or so they say.”

I frowned at that, for in all I’d ever been taught, the Khanum had been depicted as wise and blessed.

“How is it like the Khanum?” I asked. “They were the first imperials. Why do you say they were as dangerous as Pyktis?”

The augurs again exchanged an inscrutable look.

The woman tapped, and Ghrelin, now panting with exhaustion, translated: “Do you know of how Sublimes such as you were made in mimicry of the grand and ancient Khanum? Possessing a portion of their cognitive powers—memory, calculation, spatial conceptualization, and so on—but no more than that one portion? For we can duplicate little of what the first imperials were.”

“I do,” I said.

The man said: “But this is not the whole of it. The Khanum of old could enter a…a fugue. An elevation of their minds to the highest levels, calling upon all their faculties. This made them capable of incomprehensible brilliance, feats of intellect even we cannot decipher.”

The woman: “ This is what augury is. It is an attempt to replicate this powerful elevation. We have only found a way for it to work with axioms, however, and no other Sublime. And it is limited in the same ways.”

The man then: “For the Khanum of old grew incomprehensible as they aged. The more brilliant they became, the more mad they grew, and inarticulate. They spoke languages no one knew—if they spoke at all.”

The woman: “Augury does this same thing, but over a much shorter period—only three years, and the third year can be treacherous. It is tempestuous and wild. That is when those of our order exhibit the most paranoias, the most erraticism.”

The man smiled weakly and tapped out: “But it could be far worse. There are whispers of other attempts to replicate the Khanum, to remake the emperor’s bloodline anew. These efforts produced beings wild and savage, and full of strange passions and alien appetites. None of them lived past a year, we are told.”

I shuddered in my suit and tried to focus on the investigation. “And you think Pyktis was suffering a madness like this?”

The woman slowly tapped out a response: “We did, yes.”

“Why?” I asked.

The man’s response was quick. Swallowing, Ghrelin translated: “Because we came to believe he was contemplating self-termination.”

“You mean…”

The woman: “Suicide. Yes.”

—

The man began tapping, and Ghrelin—very weak now—translated: “We smelled it in the wind. And in sensing this, perhaps we…we hastened his choices.”

“We tried to follow him during the last of these vanishings,” said the woman. “We used all of our arts to decipher the pattern of his movements, the possible places he could slip away to.”

“And…then we found him,” said the man. “We came upon him standing in a tall, open window on one of the upper floors, facing one of the high courtyards of the inner layer.”

The woman, head bowed: “As if to jump. To send himself plummeting to his death.”

The man: “A desperate thing, as if to escape.”

“He heard us coming,” said the woman. “Tried to step back in and pretend all was aright.”

The man: “But he tried to hide something. Something he held in his hand, which he placed in his pocket.”

“A flash of metal,” said the woman. “Small and delicate, and bright. A knife, or so I thought.”

“We did not ask upon it,” said the man. “For he seemed on the border of a rage. We averted our eyes, apologized, and returned to our works.”

“The days after this were frozen and fraught,” tapped the woman. “To him, it had been a secret thing. And to have it known was a great harm.”

“And then,” tapped the man.

“And then…” The female augur’s eyes trailed up the walls to stare at the ceiling. “The accident. And the nature of this accident, it…it…”

They fell silent: the first time they had been inarticulate, I noticed.

The male augur leaned forward, peering into my eyes, his fingers tapping frantically on his board as Ghrelin spoke: “We thought it was an intentional mistake. Like a man setting a trap for himself, a noose hanging just so, and then allowing himself to proceed through his day, claiming to be unaware that he walked through his last moments of his own devising.”

The woman, harshly: “No! An accident. That was what it was. He was degrading. Decaying. It is our fault that it happened. We should have done more to stop it.”

The man: “But we did. We did warn our superiors. They spoke to Pyktis. And he convinced them that nothing was wrong.”

The woman: “Yet he could be convincing! This we know! Even as he was filled with despair, he…”

The man glanced at her, then looked to me and tapped out: “A man can be many things. Despairing yet confident. Mad yet persuasive. And he could have loved us, while…while still planning his death.”

The woman tapped out a sharp “ No. ”

A tormented silence fell over them.

I sat forward, sensing something lurking in his comments. I asked, “Why do you say he loved you in doing such a thing?”

The man, hesitantly: “Because it should have been us who approached the marrow with him that day. We who tried to help bind it with him, to bathe it in nutrients so it could sleep and persist, for we were of his polytia. Yet he asked to be accompanied by others that day. At the time, we thought it a slight, but…” He trailed off.

I said, “But now you think he was sparing you death.”

The man bowed his head and tapped: “Could that be love? Could a thing capable of that also love? I do not know. And now, here you are, Iudex, with a coldness to your eye, and I wonder…”

I studied them both, taking in the mournful looks on their faces. Yet my mind strayed back to what they’d said of Pyktis’s supposed thoughts of suicide, when they’d found him standing in the window of the tower, and I recalled their first statements to me, bold and proud: This we knew. This was known.

They have already found the truth, I thought.

I imagined Pyktis, a figure standing in the window in this strange place, and then I recalled a moment with Malo, from the very start of this investigation.

Plucking a man from such a high room, she’d said, with the windows locked and all, and no one saw nor heard a thing…I cannot ken it.

Another window, another vanishing.

I said, “But you returned to the window, in the tower. And you found out that he hadn’t been planning to jump. You found he’d been climbing out of it, didn’t you?”

The sorrow vanished from the augurs’ faces. They gazed at me, fascinated and slightly outraged.

The woman’s fingers turned into a blur, and she tapped: “How was this known? How did you come to know this?”

Then the man: “Yes. How?”

I said nothing.

The woman shuddered, her lips tight. “How awful you are. We are like wanderers in a desert, begging for water, and you give us only sand.”

“What did you find?” I asked.

After a resentful silence, the man tapped out: “We realized he had not been contemplating a jump from the window. Rather, he had been about to climb down. ”

“There was a chamber just below the window,” tapped the woman. “Leading to a section of building that had been sealed off. The consequences of an old contamination. Walled off and forgotten.”

“This was where he’d been vanishing to,” tapped the man. “Through holes and crawl spaces, to halls forgotten and dark.”

“We did not know this,” tapped the woman. “Until weeks after he died. Until we solved his puzzle ourselves.”

The man: “For we finally followed in his footsteps. Climbed down to this secret place. And then…”

Another silence. The augurs exchanged a tense look. Then the man tapped out: “We found a shrine. ”

“A…a shrine?” I asked. “To a spirit? A pantheon?”

“We did not know,” said the woman. “Do not know. It was no cult that I recognized, but a shrine it was. Decorated and secret, with oil lamps and delicate bowls.”

“With ribbons, and cloths,” said the man. “Wreathed with facsimiles of flowers and herbs, wrought of paper. We do not know how he made it all. But then, he was most brilliant.”

“Describe this shrine, please,” I said. “What did it look like?”

“Why describe it,” said the woman, “when we can show you?”

—

The two augurs dug in their robes again, as if seeking to find yet another prediction, but they took out not parchments but rather three small wooden figures, carefully carved, still tied to their robes with string. Then with slow, thoughtful movements, they untied them and placed them before the glass for me to see.

They were figures of men, robed and bearded and stern, with their stubby arms extended. Circlets sat upon the brows of each one, the very image of kings of ancient days, high and tall and proud.

The man’s fingers tapped upon his board: “These formed the heart of his shrine. We took them from it. Kept them. Puzzled over them. As we puzzle over Pyktis to this day.”

The woman watched me closely and tapped: “Can you see reason in this? Can you see truth in this carven wood?”

The man: “For we cannot. We think it is incomplete. The figures seem to be made to hold something. A stick, or rod, or wand. We do not know.”

I stared at the figures for a great while. An idea began to calcify within my mind, like ice forming at the top of a pool of water, and as it grew, my spine went cold.

I had seen such figures before, arranged on the king’s hall in the High City of Yarrow, their carven figures illuminated by oil lamps floating before them. And I’d seen smaller versions of them, as well, had I not?

My eyes fluttered, and I recalled what Satrap Darhi had told me, a wooden totem much like these held in his hand: We Yarrow labor under the watch of our ancestors. All we do must honor their name.

Our ancestors.

“No,” I whispered. “It is impossible.”

The woman, tapping harshly: “What do you mean?”

My mind raced on, hurtling toward thoughts that seemed senseless. Pyktis had been a great augur, a Rathras Apoth, prized among the Shroud. He could be no other thing.

The prince’s words: This is old history. But…my grandfathers found many imperial visitors who were more than happy to become a wife of the throne, as it meant living in great finery. They came here, Tala, or Kurmini, or Rathras, and gave children to the king and the most esteemed members of his court…

But it could be so. Perhaps it could be so.

Trembling, I cleared my throat and said, “The metal you saw in Pyktis’s hands, the day you found him in the window. What color was it?”

“It was silver,” said the man. “This I saw. Why?”

I ignored them and kept staring at the totems, studying their crude faces. Their stubby arms, extended as if to hold something: perhaps a stick, or a string.

My eyes fluttered again, and I recalled more of Darhi’s words: Did you see the silver circlet on the prince’s brow? And the silver chain about his neck?…Those are the signifiers of the king’s chosen heir. The silvers go to him—and only to him.

No, I thought. No, no, it is insane.

Yet it would fit. A necklace might have once draped here, in the hands of these crude totems, as if to keep the signifiers of one’s birthright safe in the hands of the ancestors.

My father expects me to die here.

To die here. Of course.

A tapping filled the air. Then Ghrelin’s voice, speaking for the male augur: “He knows. He has seen a truth. One invisible even to our eyes.”

The woman, pleading: “Tell us. Please, tell us.”

“Is there more?” I demanded.

“Tell us,” tapped the man. “Please, please, tell us what you know. We starve for it.”

“Is there more?” I asked again. “More to show me, or more to tell?”

The woman’s fingers danced on her board: “We know no more. This is all we have, and it is not enough.”

I stood up, quaking. I had to leave, to return to Ana, to spill all I’d seen here as quickly as I could, for I could not carry this dreadful secret for long.

“Please,” said the man, standing and tapping. “Please, please, we beg you, tell us.”

“I can’t,” I said. “You know that.”

Then the woman: “No, no. Do you know what it is like for we augurs to possess too small a piece of information? Enough to tantalize, but not enough to comprehend?”

The man: “And to have it for this man of all men, this one of all we augurs? Can you imagine how this torments us?”

I studied them. I’d thought them inhuman and alien when I’d first seen them, yet the plaintive, pained looks in their eyes were ones I knew very well. I’d seen such sights often in my work, among those who grieved the dead and the missing: still human, and helpless, and still so full of hurt.

“I can say no more than you already know,” I said. “Sunus Pyktis lived a story while he was among you. In doing this I believe he harmed not only you but himself as well. If you find me when your term is over, I shall tell you all I know.”

They stared at me, despondent. The woman’s fingers tapped: “When we leave this place, we shall no longer be these things.”

The man: “This will be as a dream. Sunus will be as a dream.”

“I’m sorry,” I said to them. “But I can say no more.”

I stooped to rouse Ghrelin from his trance. Yet the female augur shot to her feet, her fingers flickering on her board.

“And if you are wrong?” Ghrelin said, still mumbling her words. “If you are wrong about all this, about Pyktis, about everything? What then? For this was not projected. It was not foreseen. It was not!”

I helped Ghrelin to stand and gently guided him away.

Still she tapped, and still he spoke, whispering beside me: “You are wrong, you are wrong, you are wrong! This was not predicted! You are wrong, wrong, you must be wrong!”