Page 141 of A Drop of Corruption

“Yes, ma’am.”

She meditated on this, then turned her face to the west. Then shetwitched in her chair and turned yet again, now facing where Pyktis’s corpse lay in the shadows. She pulled her blindfold away—a normally mad thing for her to do, given her dislike of new environs—and gazed at the body, as if enraptured.

“Din,” she said. “Your knife.”

“What, ma’am? You—”

“Your knife. Give me your knife, boy—now!”

I did so, dismayed by the request. She took it, then flew to the corpse’s side. For a moment I feared she intended to mar the body, butchering it in her madness, yet a voice in my mind told me this was not so.

She will not savage it,the voice said quietly and calmly.She plans to eat it, to feast upon it—for this is the feast she has so long hungered for, true?

Ana raised the knife; but my horror was entirely wrong, for rather than slashing at the flesh, she wedged the blade between the corpse’s teeth and wiggled it back and forth, until a tooth came free with an awful crunch. Then she dropped my knife and turned the tooth over and over in her fingers, like a witch reading her scrying stone.

“A fine tooth,” she whispered. “A fine imperial tooth, healthy and strong from many calcious grafts…” She tapped it against the floor. “Andrecentgrafts at that. This has no staining or weakness from months in the jungle. Why would Pyktis bother to modify his teeth? Except…”

She froze, and dropped the tooth. Then she stood and turned to the northwest. She walked to the chamber walls as if she could see through them and behold some distant movement in the High City on the hills above.

“His dogs,” she whispered. “Ofcourse…of course he killed the dogs first.”

“His…dogs?” I asked. “Jari Pavitar’s dogs? Do they matter in this, ma’am?”

“Do they matter?” Then she shook her head, laughed, and turned to face me. “Do theymatter,Din? I…I see it now! A hidden piece! One kept off the board entirely, while all our eyes were fixed onsomething else…” Then she cried out: “Oh, how I see it! I see all of it now,I see it now!”

Still shaking her head, Ana dreamily walked toward me, and when she entered the light of the lamps, I gasped.

Her wide yellow eyes were quivering and dancing, shaking in her skull just as my own shook when I summoned my memories. In the blue mai-light, and with the blood still fresh on her chin and her features so strangely distended, the sight struck me cold.

“I see his game, his mind!” cried Ana. “I see all the warp and weft he spins about us, even now! What a fine, clever officer he was, and what a finer one he would have made, had his heart not been so poisoned by the puerile dreams of petty men!”

Her devilish smile lingered on her face for a moment; then she seemed to suddenly remember my gaze, and she turned away into the shadows, like she’d committed some indiscretion. She wiped her mouth of blood and replaced her blindfold. When she returned to the dim lamplight, she seemed returned to her ordinary self, though there remained something strange and stretched to her face.

“I have made my decision,” she whispered. “I know where the other weapon lies.”

“D-do you, ma’am?” I said softly.

“Oh, yes. I know all the threads within his design now! Fetch my lyre!”

“Yourlyre,ma’am?”

“Yes, for that shall be most critical! Fetch that and bring Thelenai and the others back in! For I’ve a task for her, and much scheming to do. And then, Dinios, you shall lead myself and the wardens back to the High City, to return the wealth of that kingdom.” She grinned horribly. “And there I shall lay the entire plot bare.”

—

We threw ourselvesto it then, hurtling about in the dark, following Ana’s cries and exhortations, building her grand plan beneath the darkening skies. When our work took us outside she stayed within her carriage, whispering or crying instructions through a crack in thedoor, sightlessly predicting our movements. I was reminded of the tale of the eidolon trapped in its mausoleum, whispering tales of how all its neighboring dead had come to lie in their shelves.

With each horrible revelation, our pace grew faster. Thelenai nearly screamed in rage, and Malo gasped and cursed; but still we worked, breathlessly and thoughtlessly, seizing weapons and tools to secure our path ahead.

“A red rocket,” Ana said to Thelenai as our preparations ended. “Wemustsee a red rocket when your work is done. Only then can I proceed with confidence. Is that clear?”

“Very,” said Thelenai weakly, now stripped of all her pride and dignity. “I shall send it into the skies at the very moment.”

“Excellent. Now, Din—how long has it been since the scribe-hawk departed with news for Kardas?”

“Nearly three hours by now, ma’am,” I said.

“Good,” purred Ana’s voice through the crack in the carriage. “Then I believe we are ready to proceed.”