Page 121 of A Drop of Corruption

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 dreamyvoice: “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 hasneverentered 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.”