Page 49 of A Drop of Corruption (Shadow of the Leviathan #2)

Chapter 49

An imperial barge and several dozen Apoth MILITII awaited us at the bend of the River Tarif, at the edge of the Elder West, having come when they’d seen the rocket in the sky. They escorted us and all we’d secured into the city, and as we traveled I gave them my report, which they quickly recorded and sent to Prificto Kardas by scribe-hawk. “He speaks with the prince now at the High City,” said a militis to me. “Yet his talks shall soon change! I wager we have all his realm’s fortune aboard our vessel.”

Once we returned to Yarrowdale we brought the entire hoard into one of the preparation rooms of the fermentation works: the very chamber where I’d been so thoroughly dosed before my trip to the Shroud, in fact. There Thelenai and Ana both awaited us, and Thelenai watched fretfully as the wardens laid out each crate, listening as I breathlessly recounted all we’d experienced.

When I finished, there was a long silence. Pyktis’s corpse lay in the open Yarrow chest before Ana. The wardens sat beside the long-sought six crates of fertilizer, weary but triumphant. I stood at the edge of the room, feeling far less victorious, for as I’d spoken, Ana’s blindfolded face had twisted in a way I found distinctly unsettling.

Thelenai stared down on Pyktis’s body. “How strange it is, to feel sorrow at the sight of this man,” she whispered. “He is a creature I made, in a way. Yet all this time he’d been secretly made by another, and bent wholly toward my destruction. How we would have loved and adored him if he’d come to us honestly! For his genius was great, and we would not have cared from whence it came. All fruits of flesh are equal in the eyes of the Empire.” She turned to Ana, who still sat in silence, a deep glower on her face. “What do you proclaim, Dolabra? It seems a great triumph, to find all we sought and all our enemies dead, and all at once.”

I winced; for that, I knew, was precisely what troubled her now.

Finally Ana spoke: “Why keep the body?”

“Pardon?” said Thelenai.

“Why would Darhi keep Pyktis’s body?” Ana demanded. “Why package it up so?”

We all looked at the corpse and thought on that.

“I do not know,” said Thelenai. “Perhaps his hatred of the man was that great.”

“You think he was going to… do something to it, ma’am?” said Malo.

“Again, I do not know,” said Thelenai, affronted.

“Or,” I said, “perhaps…Pyktis was killed by another, ma’am?”

Ana’s head snapped up to gaze sightlessly upon me. “Oh? Say more, Din.”

“W-well,” I said. “Someone might have killed Pyktis and stored his body in the chest in the Yarrow vaults, packaged as if it were a pile of gold. If Darhi’s aim was to steal all he could and flee, he might not have known he’d just stolen a body as well, just like he might not have comprehended the value of the grafts he’d stolen.”

“So…you suggest yet another killer?” said Thelenai uncertainly. “A killer of Pyktis, who stored his body in this chest? I cannot comprehend that…but I confess, I have little appetite to pursue it. The clear conclusion is that the man in possession of the body is the one who killed him. Indeed, the same man who had a tremendous reason to kill him—Satrap Darhi. For you believed Pyktis was killing his old allies one by one, true?”

Ana was silent.

“And even if someone else killed him,” said Thelenai, “how troubled are we that Pyktis is slain, given that we have secured the reagents he so needed?”

Ana’s next words were like the snapping of a steel blade: “Have we?”

The wardens fell to muttering and drew symbols in the air.

“You said six crates had been stolen, ma’am,” said Malo slowly. “And six crates is what we’ve found.”

“Yes,” said Ana tersely. “We have crates. But I would like their contents tested, for merely having the crates makes me less than content! Specifically, I want to test their concentration. ”

“You worry it has been diluted?” asked Thelenai. “Cut with another substance?”

“Oh, I worry about all things, with this investigation,” said Ana. “Please test it. And hurry.”

The wardens and Thelenai quickly produced tools and instruments to take samples from the fertilizer. I felt myself nearly toppling over from exhaustion, yet Sabudara pressed a small vial in my hand. “Clariphage,” she said. “To keep your eyes open, pretty one.”

Mumbling about being grafted so often, I tossed the vial back. It was sickly sweet, but the instant I consumed it, I felt energy return to my limbs and watched the Apoths work.

The first four boxes, they pronounced, were the proper concentration of reagents, exactly as they’d been shipped from Yarrowdale. The fifth, however, was somewhat diluted, but only slightly. “Yet this,” Thelenai said, “could be from decay, or improper storage.”

But as they tested the contents of the sixth crate, their faces changed. Thelenai peered at the cloudiness of the reagents in her instruments, then went pale and announced, “It is…forty percent of its expected concentration.”

Malo shut her eyes, dismayed. Again, the wardens fell to muttering and made more strange gestures to beseech the aid of the fates. Such was my despair that I had half a mind to join them.

“Meaning over half of its contents have been removed,” said Ana, “and replaced with another substance?”

“Yes,” said Thelenai, her voice hardly a whisper. “A much more common fertilizer. One with far less qudaydin kani in its production.”

“How much has been removed, in weight?”

“Just over four stone,” said Thelenai. She pressed a hand to her brow. “So. Enough…enough to achieve a warping much, much greater than what was seen in that jungle clearing.”

A miserable silence filled the chamber.

Thelenai turned to Ana. “He…he already took all he needs, didn’t he? He did it long ago.”

“Yes,” said Ana softly. “I rather think he has.”

“So…so another weapon lies sleeping somewhere.” A tremor of panic rang in Thelenai’s voice now. “Doesn’t it, Dolabra?”

Ana’s response was light and unbothered: “Yes. I think it does. For he is just the sort to manufacture an attack that would succeed even if he himself perished.”

“But…but where is it?” begged Thelenai. “Where has he hidden the weapon? What does he mean to strike at now, from beyond even the barrier of death?”

Ana pursed her lips and cocked her head, her fingers flitting in the folds of her dress as they so often did. Then she said, “I don’t know.”

—

“After all we’ve done,” whispered Malo. “After everything…”

The wardens began chattering to each other in panicked Pithian, and Thelenai paced the room, her crimson robes fluttering. “It must be somewhere,” she said. “Yet we have checked all the tools and shipments upon the Shroud, and have found not a thing! How could he still intend to attack it? What methods does he devise now?”

I could see Ana’s face twitching. I stood and, feeling bold, said, “Calm, please, Commander-Prificto. My immunis will need some quiet to think upon this.”

Again, a silence filled the dismal chamber, and we all watched as Ana sat before the crates of reagents and the chest containing the corpse, her pale face twisted in thought. Minutes passed, and we did nothing but smell the reek of the fertilizers, the rot of Pyktis’s body, and the musk and sweat of the wardens and myself.

Finally Ana whispered, “Apophenia.”

I leaned close. “Pardon, ma’am?”

“Apophenia,” she said again. “The affliction of spying meaning and patterns in randomness. The augurs struggle with it, yet…I feel it is this state he aimed to induce in me. He bombards me with so much evidence and motives and mysteries that my mind cannot function! It is as if he knows my very nature.” Then she shook her head. “There is no more to it. I must do something now that I have long since avoided.”

“What’s that, ma’am?” I asked.

She sighed deeply. “I shall need to dine. ”

A stupefied pause. Sabudara sat forward, peering at Malo for confirmation, mouthing Dine?

Malo ignored her, crying, “You what ?”

“Ahh—beg pardon, ma’am?” I said. “Dine again?”

Ana waved a hand like our bewilderment was beneath acknowledgment. “Yes, I shall need to dine ! But it will be very different from every meal you’ve seen me consume before.”

Everyone looked to me, as if to confirm that her words were true. I shrugged, feeling quite as confused as they.

“Dolabra…” said Thelenai. “So grateful I am for the works you have done for us that I am nearly moved to grant you anything you wish without thought. But—this is an emergency, surely. Is it wisdom to stop now to sate your hungers?”

“It is!” said Ana. “As I said, this meal will be different. For I must think differently to evaluate this problem. Tell me, Commander-Prificto—do the Apoths here possess any stock of kizkil mushrooms?”

Thelenai blinked, startled. “We do. That is a highly regulated substance, as it is very psychoactive and dangerous.”

I covered my face as I realized what she was asking. “Ma’am,” I said. “You can’t seriously be asking us to acquire you psychedelics now ?”

Yet Ana’s bearing was utterly grim. “Oh, I am deadly serious, Din,” she said. “As you should be if you wish me to divine where this weapon now lies! Can you get me this, Thelenai?”

“I…Yes. But why would you need them?”

“I have been quite clear,” said Ana. “Just as the augurs need their augury, I have my own hungers I must sate to prod my thinking. I shall only need three smallstone worth or so.”

Thelenai stared. “That is enough to sicken or even kill a person, Dolabra.”

“Not all people. Can you fetch them before dark falls?”

“Well…yes, I can do so.”

“Good.” Ana’s head turned to me. “And you, Din—you will need to hurry to the Yarrowdale butchery. I will need two calf livers for my meal, as rare as possible.”

“Livers,” I echoed faintly.

“Yes— calf livers, specifically. Bring them to me wrapped in paper, please. Then I shall sup, and reflect on the situation, and decide how we shall proceed. Go now, and hurry! For while we have some time to prepare, we do not have days’ worth!”

—

I completed my strange errand and returned to the testing chamber just as evening came on, feeling like an occultist practicing some rite of witchcraft with this dark, bloodied parchment package under my arm. Thelenai had already provided the kizkil mushrooms, and the small, shrunken lumps sat in a bowl atop a table the Apoths had provided. Next to the bowl sat a fork and a knife and a napkin. Besides this and two chairs positioned on either side, the table was clear.

“Your two calf livers,” I said, laying the parchment next to the bowl. “Fresh enough to soak through the paper and stain my coat. How would you like me to cook this for you, ma’am?”

“Oh, not at all, Din,” Ana said. “For this meal, I need only what has been provided. However…I would like you all to leave, if you could.”

“You desire privacy?” said Thelenai.

“This seems hardly a fine place for a private meal,” muttered Malo, “given the corpse in the box just over there, and the stink of that altered soil.”

“And yet privacy is what I ask!” said Ana. “Save for Din, of course. He is my engraver, and I shall need someone to witness my revelations, should I be blessed with any. Now, I can eat here, or I may remove to my chambers, where I can then eat in peace. Which do we all prefer?”

“Say no more,” said Thelenai, sighing. “We shall leave you to this rite, Dolabra. I hope it yields heady dividends!” She gestured, and they all began to troop out.

As she followed at the end of the line, Malo stepped close and whispered, “You remember how I said your immunis sometimes has a strange smell to her? Well, she smells very queer to me now! So much so that I am glad to leave this room.”

She walked out, and the door swung shut, and I was alone in the room save for the corpse of Pyktis, and Ana, still sitting sprawled on the floor.