Page 7 of A Drop of Corruption

It took nearlyan hour of walking to reach Old Town. There the fretvine houses of New Town receded, and in their place stood tall, somber buildings of pale stone all stained faint green. Stone buildings were quite rare in the Empire, and these were of beautiful make, with a coral design running atop their roofs and coiling about their columns; yet many leaned at angles, or slumped in places, pooling water on their porches and overflowing with bundles of dark green growth.

“This is Old Town?” I asked dubiously.

“Used to be the high seat of Yarrow, many years back,” saidMalo. “The place of the king and his noble court. Do you not find it impressive?”

I eyed a tumorous growth of mold crawling up one wall. “It seems rather lived in.”

“That is one term for it,” she conceded. “The craftsmen of the old courts grew these towers from a type of sand, full of tiny bugs. You could add things to the sand, put it in a mold, and the bugs within would make it harden into that shape. But the stone did not age well. Didn’t settle right. And many things leaned.”

I dodged a stream of water trickling down from the roofs. “So I see.”

“Yes. Then the Empire came, and made their deal with the king, and bought the land here. The Yarrow court abandoned this place, moving to the high holy city above, and took with them the arts of how to maintain these stones. Now it rots. As do all their people who dwell here.”

“The king simply left his people here? With no arrangements?”

“Yes?”

“Why would he do so?”

She paused and looked back at me, studying my face as if suddenly worried I was some reckless cretin. Then she shook her head and we continued on.

I followed her through the warrens. There was a somber air in this place: the people here were thin and unhealthy, and there was the ever-present echo of coughing.

A thought occurred to me.

“Beg pardon,” I said. “But—the Treasury delegation was lodgedhere?”

“It’s as I told you.” Malo grunted as we climbed a short, awkward stair. “No one loves the tax man, Kol. Don’t want him to stay, stick him somewhere shit. The king of Yarrow apparently delights in torturing the Treasury officers they send to speak with him, and requested they stay here. Now—step fast. We are in a dangerous area. I don’t want anyone seeing your very pretty face, assumingyou’re a rich man who paid for the shaping of it, and knifing you for your talints.”

“I did not pay for my face,” I said, nettled, but Malo was already moving.

—

We finally cameto a tall stone building, rising high above the leaning sprawl of Old Town. It was easily the finest of the stone towers, spanning six stories, with an ornate, coral skin dotted with many small windows, yet despite its scale and artistry, it, too, was green with fungus and greatly aged by the coastal weather.

“That was his room,” Malo said, pointing. “Up there.”

I looked up, shadowed my eyes with a hand, and squinted. She appeared to be pointing at one window at the very top.

“Sujedo…was housed in that highest room?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said.

“So he didn’t just disappear from a locked room,” I sighed, “but from a locked room four hundred span off the ground.”

“Thereabout. Quite a trick, no? Plucking a man from such a high room, with the windows locked and all, and no one saw nor heard a thing…I cannot ken it.”

I slid a shootstraw pipe from my pocket, stuck it in my mouth, and chewed on it, letting the taste of the tobacco calm my mind and stomach. “And I suppose he didn’t just fall out, being as a body striking the ground tends to produce a lot of noise and notice.”

“And a big stain,” she added. “Of which we have found none. Nor can I smell blood anywhere about this place—except within Sujedo’s rooms.”

I sniffed my vial, engraving this sight, and we entered the tower.

The rooms were guarded by three Apoth militii, who stood gawking in the hallways as Malo unlocked and opened the door to the dead man’s rooms for me. I paused in the entryway, taking it in. It must have been a stately place once, yet now it was musty and sodden. Rivulets of water wriggled across the rounded ceiling, leaving trails of mold in their wake like the slime of snails. Running along the curvingouter wall of the suite of rooms were six rounded windows peering southeast, all shut, all locked. The doors of the cupboards in the corner were open but their shelves appeared totally bare.

Yet what drew my eye most was the mossbed sitting by the wall, with a dent in the fern pillow, and a wide brown stain crawling across the sheets: perhaps enough blood to fill two sotwine pots, if not more. A serious wound, then. And from the positioning, it would indicate a wound to the torso, perhaps the kidneys or liver. Fatal if untreated.

I grunted, thinking. Then I noticed: merely standing in the hall made me put more weight on my left foot than the right.