Page 129 of A Drop of Corruption

Then I stopped. Malo stood across the street from me, bound in her red cloak, arms crossed.

“You alive?” she called.

“I am,” I said.

“You’re not sprouting horns, or growing grass out your ears, or dripping fluid from any bits of you?”

“I am not.”

“Good.” She crossed the lane to me. “Then I shall risk the airs about you to tell you ill tidings—for the prince has sent us a message.” She looked me in the eye, her face as grim as I’d ever seen it. “Darhi is gone.”

“Gone? Pyktis has killed him as well?”

“No,” said Malo slowly. “Not that. Rather, he has fled in the night.Aftergrabbing a sizable chunk of the Yarrow treasury from the king’s vaults, too.”

I gaped at her, trying to make sense of this. “Darhi…So. He was…”

“Pyktis’s contact within the court,” said Malo. “Yes. So we think.”

“Darhiwas the one coordinating with him and Gorthaus…and now he’s run?”

“So it seems!” said Malo. She grinned cheerlessly. “Makes sense, as he was the fucker managing all the diplomatic meetings! And he, of course, was already willing to betray his realm by indulging in Kardas’s double dealings. Perhaps we should have seen it sooner.”

“But Gorthaus’s murder rattled him.”

“As it should have! If Pyktis really is killing off all his old allies, and if he’s so clever that a citadel full of armed guards can’t stop him, I’d wish to flee in the night, too.”

I sighed and pinched the bridge of my nose. “And do we have a guess where he might have gone?”

“The prince’s folk have no fucking idea. We are told Darhi has fled so quickly and thoroughly that it is clear he planned his flight for some time, and ensured he is difficult to track. The amount of money he stole is apparently so great that the prince is now nothing short of despondent. The dolt has even pledged permission to let us pursue him deep into the realm! Ana thinks on how best to do this but wished to wait for you. I hope you have better news for us?”

“No,” I said huskily. “No, I do not.”

“Then let us go to her. She waits in Thelenai’s office. Perhaps she has a miracle in her pocket and can stab a hole in these black clouds for us.”

—

I sat amongthe blooms of Thelenai’s office, hunched and shivering as I clutched a cup of tea, recounting to them all I’d seen within the Shroud. Thelenai stood at the windows, facing away, while Malo lurked behind a clutch of coiled vines like a predator stalking its prey. Only Ana moved, sitting hunched before the wall of flowers, rocking back and forth, yet even in such a colorful place, the sight of her made my blood cold: she seemed thinner and gaunter than ever, as if she was so burdened with thought that her body burned up its sustenance faster than she could replenish it.

When I finished, there was a silence. Then Malo said, “By gods…they let youseeit? They truly let youseethe marrow?”

“Yes,” murmured Thelenai. “What a privilege that must have been. One even I myself have not experienced…”

I glanced at Ana, who had stopped moving. It seemed Malo and Thelenai had not grasped my revelation. I wondered if I had been mad for thinking it.

There was another disturbing, glottal click from Ana’s throat, and she shifted on her pillow. “I am most fixated by the Shroud itself…a thing so terribly unnatural, bred and formed to survive all the cruelties nature throws at us. It is most grotesquely imperial, in a way!” Her pale fingers crawled over her knees. “Yet I am even less surprised now to find that my theories of Pyktis prove true. Even he was broken by dwelling in that strange place—enough to reveal a great secret of himself.” She turned her blindfolded face to Malo. “For you recognize the descriptions of those totems, do you not, Signum?”

“I do,” said Malo. “They almost sound like ancestor totems of Yarrow. But I can’t fathom why an augur would ever wish to—”

Ana’s blindfolded face swiveled to me. “Din!”

“Y-yes, ma’am?”

“You’ve already put it together, haven’t you? Just as the augurs said.”

“I…somewhat think so, ma’am.”

“Then out with it. Speak, child.”