Page 138 of A Drop of Corruption

“You said six crates had been stolen, ma’am,” said Malo slowly. “And six crates is what we’ve found.”

“Yes,” said Ana tersely. “We have crates. But I would like their contents tested, for merely having the crates makes me less than content! Specifically, I want to test theirconcentration.”

“You worry it has been diluted?” asked Thelenai. “Cut with another substance?”

“Oh, I worry about all things, with this investigation,” said Ana. “Please test it. And hurry.”

The wardens and Thelenai quickly produced tools and instruments to take samples from the fertilizer. I felt myself nearly toppling over from exhaustion, yet Sabudara pressed a small vial in my hand. “Clariphage,” she said. “To keep your eyes open, pretty one.”

Mumbling about being grafted so often, I tossed the vial back. It was sickly sweet, but the instant I consumed it, I felt energy return to my limbs and watched the Apoths work.

The first four boxes, they pronounced, were the proper concentration of reagents, exactly as they’d been shipped from Yarrowdale. The fifth, however, was somewhat diluted, but only slightly. “Yet this,” Thelenai said, “could be from decay, or improper storage.”

But as they tested the contents of the sixth crate, their faces changed. Thelenai peered at the cloudiness of the reagents in her instruments, then went pale and announced, “It is…forty percent of its expected concentration.”

Malo shut her eyes, dismayed. Again, the wardens fell to muttering and made more strange gestures to beseech the aid of the fates. Such was my despair that I had half a mind to join them.

“Meaning over half of its contents have been removed,” said Ana, “and replaced with another substance?”

“Yes,” said Thelenai, her voice hardly a whisper. “A much more common fertilizer. One with far lessqudaydin kaniin its production.”

“How much has been removed, in weight?”

“Just over four stone,” said Thelenai. She pressed a hand to her brow. “So. Enough…enough to achieve a warping much, much greater than what was seen in that jungle clearing.”

A miserable silence filled the chamber.

Thelenai turned to Ana. “He…he already took all he needs, didn’t he? He did it long ago.”

“Yes,” said Ana softly. “I rather think he has.”

“So…so another weapon lies sleeping somewhere.” A tremor of panic rang in Thelenai’s voice now. “Doesn’t it, Dolabra?”

Ana’s response was light and unbothered: “Yes. I think it does. For he is just the sort to manufacture an attack that would succeed even if he himself perished.”

“But…but where is it?” begged Thelenai. “Where has he hidden the weapon? What does he mean to strike at now, from beyond even the barrier of death?”

Ana pursed her lips and cocked her head, her fingers flitting in the folds of her dress as they so often did. Then she said, “I don’t know.”

—

“After all we’ve done,”whispered Malo. “After everything…”

The wardens began chattering to each other in panicked Pithian, and Thelenai paced the room, her crimson robes fluttering. “It must be somewhere,” she said. “Yet we have checked all the tools and shipments upon the Shroud, and have found not a thing! How could he still intend to attack it? What methods does he devise now?”

I could see Ana’s face twitching. I stood and, feeling bold, said, “Calm, please, Commander-Prificto. My immunis will need some quiet to think upon this.”

Again, a silence filled the dismal chamber, and we all watched as Ana sat before the crates of reagents and the chest containing the corpse, her pale face twisted in thought. Minutes passed, and we did nothing but smell the reek of the fertilizers, the rot of Pyktis’s body, and the musk and sweat of the wardens and myself.

Finally Ana whispered, “Apophenia.”

I leaned close. “Pardon, ma’am?”

“Apophenia,” she said again. “The affliction of spying meaning and patterns in randomness. The augurs struggle with it, yet…I feel it is this state he aimed to induce in me. He bombards me with so much evidence and motives and mysteries that my mind cannot function! It is as if he knows my very nature.” Then she shook her head. “There is no more to it. I must do something now that I have long since avoided.”

“What’s that, ma’am?” I asked.

She sighed deeply. “I shall need todine.”