Page 123 of A Drop of Corruption

The woman: “Why do you condemn us to such a fate? You ask of us and we shall ask of you. It is only fair.”

I stayed silent, wondering if I should ask another question or wait it out. In many ways, this was rather like how I often dealt with Ana, though the augurs seemed more alien than erratic.

Then the woman cocked her head and tapped out: “Oh…do you see that?”

I waited and did not move.

The woman tapped again: “I do not like how he blinks so little. Such a paucity of eye movement. Does this Tala man seem…accustomedto us?”

The man grew excited: “Does he? I think so, yes. We startle him not at all, and he moves so little.”

“Has hemetaugurs before?” said the woman. “Has he dallied in their company so? How could that be, if augurs are only here, and no Iudex has ever come to this place?”

The man: “Has he met an augur, or…” He cocked his head. “…or somethinglikean augur?”

The woman: “Tell us, boy—have you? Have you held parley with a being akin to us?”

I swallowed, disliking this shift in the conversation. I did not wish for them to ask me about Ana, who suddenly—startlingly, in fact—did seem very similar to them. If they grew too interested in her, I felt sure they would eat up the whole of our time asking about her.

I remembered the rules Thelenai had said: I was not to answer any of their questions or listen to their predictions.

But I needed to say something, now. Something startling that would send their augmented minds barreling down another path entirely.

Time enough to dispense with the rules, then.

I said, “Pyktis lives. He means great harm. I must know more of him to stop it.”

The augurs blinked in unison at that. Again, they shared a cryptic glance. Then they began tapping, and Ghrelin shuddered as he spoke for them.

The man, now worried: “Great harm…this cannot be. Not Pyktis.”

The woman: “Sunus Pyktis was a troubled thing, a tortured man, but…he was not a villain. This was not predicted. I cannot fathom this.”

I said nothing.

The woman, tapping slower, quieter: “He means truth. His eyes do not waver. He thinks Pyktis a criminal thing.”

The man: “I cannot comprehend this. Not from our Pyktis. Not from the man I once called friend and brother.”

The woman, her tone sharp: “Called him such we may have—but he never called us so. Not in his heart.”

Another silence. I sensed consternation now.

They began tapping again. Ghrelin, shuddering, shivering, spoke once more.

“We will tell you of Pyktis,” said the woman. “For though he was a puzzle to us, a thing lovely yet unknowable, we…we worry now.”

The man, soft and tremulous: “If we were wrong about him, then all our predictions, all our calculations…they now sit askew.”

The woman shook her head and tapped out: “It cannot be. We are his last defense, then. He was difficult to know, but we knew him best—and weknowhe must be innocent of whatever you imagine.”

The man: “What do you wish to know, Iudex?”

“All you saw of him,” I said. “Start at the beginning, please.”

Chapter 46

The male augur began to tap,and as he did, Ghrelin chanted in his dreamy, misty cadence, his head lolling back and forth as the words coursed through him.