Page 4 of A Drop of Corruption

I gave her a small, cold smile. “I didn’t.”

“Of course not. We found all the bits some twelve leagues away from his lodgings. The journey to the exact spot is long, hilly, jungle-dense, swampy. And that isafteryou leave the city of Yarrowdale, with many eyes watching. A tricky path to walk undetected, let alone with a body.” She spat a stream of black spittle to her right. It landed directly in the drain below the table: a feat of astonishing accuracy. “Iam beset by impossibilities. How might this man be stolen from such a place with no one noticing? How could he reappear in such a state, so far away? We wardens could not answer any of it.” She shot me a wry look. “How happy am I to have you Iudex here to work your magic. I much prefer hunting ratshit smugglers in the jungle to this.”

A flatulent puff arose from the tendrils of moss. The stench in the room was now nothing short of horrid.

Malo sniffed the air. “Smells done to me,” she said. “Let us see…”

A final gust of reek from the brick, and then, slowly, it began to soften, starting with a sinking indentation in the center, then growing until the corners wilted and drooped, and then, gently, the mass of pale tendrils began to unfurl.

Malo began plucking at the drooping tangle, wielding a pair of tongs like a cook fluffing a kettle of rice. “Ah, yes. Come!”

I joined her beside the table. She plucked again at the dissolving moss, and a form began to emerge at the core.

No, that wasn’t right: not one form, but three.

First there was a hand, the fingers curled as if gripping an invisible ball. Its fingernails were the color of tea, and were darker than the flesh, which was a pale gray. It was ragged at the wrist, the delicate bones there ending in shattered splinters, their spongy marrow permeated with dark stains.

Next to that, a chunk of torso, headless and armless. Most of the left shoulder and rib cage, but not much else. It had been thoroughly disemboweled, as if all the organs had been scooped out by a giant spoon. Ribs emerged from the pale flesh like straw frets at the edge of a gentryman’s paper fan. Somehow, ridiculously, the left nipple remained, dark and pebbled, along with a brambly tuft of black chest hair.

And there, lying just below that on the bed of moss, was a jawbone, fleshless and perfectly severed from whatever skull it had once hung to. Much like the marrows of the fractured wrist, the crevices of the teeth were dark with sediment and stain.

“That is all they’ve found of him,” said Malo. “All they ever couldfish out of the canals of our missing Treasury man Sujedo. Sad, is it not?”

I stared at the severed pieces, my nostrils swimming with the odor of the moss, and now the stench of rot.

The sour fish in my belly rolled over yet again.

I turned, staggered to the drain in the floor, knelt, placed my hands on either side, and vomited directly down it, coughing so mightily my whole body began to ache.

“There it is,” said Malo appraisingly. “You seem very practiced! That is the most precise vomit I have ever seen.”

I resumed my position over the drain and retched again.

Chapter 2

When I had gotten holdof myself, I returned to the table and stared down at the fragments of flesh.

I had never had to work with such shattered parts of a person before. Still, it was my job as an Iudex investigator to memorize it: to engrave all I saw in my memory, and then report my experiences to my commanding officer.

I reached into my engraver’s satchel at my side, slid out a small glass vial, and uncorked it. I shut my eyes and inhaled deeply from it, letting the aroma of the nectarous oils bathe the interior of my skull: a blessing after what I’d just been through. With this scent in my nostrils, I could better anchor all the memories I’d engrave here, and quickly recall them later.

I opened my eyes, looked down at the pitiful remains of Sujedo, and focused.

I took in the shape of the remains, their color, the way they had been contorted; how the bones had been broken, how the skin had curdled, the wend and weft of the flesh. As my memory had been enhanced to be perfect, these awful sights would remain with me until I died. But such was my lot in service to the Empire.

I dabbed at my mouth with a handkerchief. “Why didn’t we find more of him?” I asked huskily.

Malo slid off her apron and gloves. “We’ve many reaper-backs in the Yarrow canals. My thinking is, one found him floating and made a meal of him.”

“Reaper-backs?”

“A turtle. Slightly smaller than a man. Very pretty shells, but very carnivorous. Can take an arm off in a single bite. Or, well…” She gestured at Sujedo’s remains. “More.”

“What makes you so sure they’re what did this?”

“The organs, or the lack of them. Reaper-backs have a tongue for them. After the smugglers, the turtles are the second most dangerous thing on the Great Canals. And they are much harder to kill.”

“How exotic. Do we think he fell prey to one of them?”