Page 6

Chapter 6

Malo and I decamped to a dingy tavern close to my own rooms in New Town for dinner, a map of the canals laid out on our crooked, damp tabletop.

“Sujedo disappeared here,” I said as I touched the area in Old Town. I squinted in the dim tavern light, then drew a line southwest to the canals. “And then, a week later, he was found here…twelve leagues away.”

“Far too far to carry a body, as I have said,” Malo said around a mouthful of scallops.

“Is there anything unique about where they found him?”

“The spot is close to one of the smugglers’ camps. Here.” She drained her cup of sotwine and pointed to one stretch of canal. “The smugglers constantly move about in the jungles to the west there, and we wardens raid them all the time, recovering stolen reagents. At first I assumed they were the culprits, but this did not fit at all.”

I took a delicate sip of broth, hoping it would calm my still-mutinous stomach. “How long’s all this smuggling gone on?”

“Decades. Since the Empire set up their Apoth works here. People pay a lot of money for reagents, and grafts and cures. Calcious grafts for broken bones, warding grafts for immunities…If you can survive stealing it from an Apoth storehouse or barge—and if you can get to the River Asigis to the west and sell it to the bargefolk there—you can be rich.”

“Do these smugglers ever kill?”

“They did not use to,” she said. “But it has gotten much worse in the past two years. Sometimes a barge disappears, and we never find the crew. Sometimes they shower the Engineers and their beasts of burden with arrows, then snatch up cargo in the chaos. We are no less merciless, however.”

I studied her face and did not doubt it.

“Why hasn’t the Empire ever taken care of it?” I asked.

“For one thing, Yarrow isn’t the Empire,” she said dourly. “Or not yet. Though the Treasury delegation was working to change that. But until that time, King Lalaca is still technically the ruler of this realm. That makes enforcing imperial rules harder.”

I lifted the bowl to my lips, rethought it, and put it back down. “But there’s more.”

“Yes. For a lot of smugglers are Pithian and Yarrow folk.” A cold smile. “Like me. And like me, they know the jungle and the waters. That is why so many wardens are of Yarrow stock. Who else could hunt them?”

“How do you feel about that?”

“About what?”

“Any of it. About the Empire taking over Yarrow. It’s been in the works for almost a century, yes?”

“I think what most Yarrow folk do,” she said simply. “I think it was the king’s agreement, made with the Empire for the king’s lands long ago.”

“Are they not your lands, too?”

A trim smile. “Spoken like one who has never known a king.”

—

Another map, another near-nameless stretch of jungle. Malo popped her last scallop into her mouth and surveyed me skeptically. “So. You are…Special Division? What is that, exactly?”

I grimaced, recalling my unpleasant discussion with Madam Poskit. “Every Iyalet has a small set of floating officers. Personnel sent to handle complex or unusual situations. Engineers, Apoths, Legion—and Iudex. This death was deemed unusual. Thus, here I am…” I attempted another meager sip of broth. “…in all my glory.”

She rubbed the rim of her bowl with one mud-stained finger, then sucked the oil off it. “If you can find how a dead man can pass through walls, I shall call you glorious indeed.”

“Let’s hope. Please be at my lodgings at sunrise, Malo. Then we shall see what task my commanding officer will put us to. Though I suspect she’ll send us to the Treasury bank.”

“Will she be able to make sense of any of this?” asked Malo.

I finished my cup of weak sotwine and gave it thought. “In all honesty,” I said, “there’s a very good chance she’ll have it sorted by nightfall.”

Malo stared at me. “What?”

I shrugged.

“You speak honestly?” she said.

“Yes. I give it…oh, six out of ten odds that she’ll know the solution by at least tomorrow morning. Maybe seven.”

“If it takes so little for her to comprehend it, why come here at all? Why not send a letter?”

I thought about it. “Probably to try new food. Or maybe just to punish me.”