Page 36 of A Drop of Corruption

I glanced at the veiled window and spied a slice of moonlit waves in the bay beyond. A dull horror crawled over me.

“You think this has something to do with titan’s blood, ma’am?” I asked quietly. “Or the Shroud? The very place where they extract the blood?”

“Perhaps. For in a way, do we not all sip from the titan’s marrow, in one fashion or another?”

I shuddered but did not answer.

Ana’s yellow eyes were now as narrow as a knife’s edge. “You know, there was an imperial proposal I read about ten years ago that referenced marrow…A bunch of Apoths got very alarmed about the Shroud, claiming that our whole system for rendering reagents and precursors was terribly fragile. Which it is, of course! We are rather like those clans in the ancient wastes who could only fell beasts during the rainy seasons and had to find all sorts of horrid ways to make the flesh last through the dry months. Rather than hauling a dead leviathan to Yarrowdale to bleed of its ichors once a wet season, these Apoths proposed removing a piece of one’s marrow and bringing it inland, so it could—perhaps!—continue excreting blood. Thus rendering this whole horrid fucking process moot.”

“What happened to these proposals?”

“Nothing. Dealing with leviathan entrails is a catastrophically dangerous business. What kind of a mad fucker would wish to climb inside one and go poking about? Whole thing got shelved. Perhaps the reference is coincidental. Or perhaps our culprit is simply mad. I cannot tell.”

She lapsed into a grudging silence, and for a while she simply rocked back and forth, and would say no more.

“Then…how shall we proceed, ma’am?” I asked.

Ana’s yellow eyes danced in her skull as she thought. Then she blew a snow-white forelock away from her face and said, “Well, first—you’re going to buy me that damned Pithian lyre, Din.”

I paused for a moment, puzzled. “Oh. The second one. Because you wish to—”

“To play my duets, yes. I simplymusthave something entertaining to focus on! Ordinarily I’d let my mind go burrowing into all manner of books and research, but I feel I have to keep my faculties mastered for this one. Get me my damned lyre, Din, or I swear by the emperor’s buttocks, every time you report back to me, my mood shall be blacker and blacker!”

I nodded. As bizarre as it was, this was better than her asking me to purchase illegal psychoactive substances: a far more common request. “You shall have it tomorrow, ma’am.”

“Good! Next…I see four fronts to attack on this one.” She stuck four knobby fingers into the air. “First—the safe. Not the Treasury one, but theApothone.”

“You’re wondering how the impostor got access to that one as well?” I said. “Kardas even speculated that the man had magic bloo—”

“No!” she spat. “Do you not see? By leaving that head in that goddamned box, this fellow was telling us two very important things about him!”

I paused, and slowly all the disparate pieces tumbled into place. “Ah. He intentionally left a head with a banded tooth,” I said. “A marker that only an Apoth would know of.”

“There’s that,” she said, “andthe head was preserved with an art known well to the Apoths! And here is another critical bit of information—for Malotold youhow people get access to those safes! They aregivenit. Do you not see the obvious answer to this, Din?”

My skin rippled with chill. “He’s an Apoth, then,” I said softly. “And he’s one that was once given access to that very box.”

“Exactly! This would explain many things, but also his skill with disguises—for who is better at shaping flesh than an Apoth? For with those arts, he could grant himself a little thickness of face, or a tuft of hair as needed.”

“And his abilities with the Treasury tests…”

“I assume having a great deal of Sujedo’s blood available wouldhelp with passing those!” she said. “I’m still not quite sure he pulled that off, though…There are methods of transferring blood from one person to another, but none are quick, andcertainlynot easy. Hence, I am focusing on his manipulation of the Apoth vault as opposed to the Treasury one.”

“So…you think the Apoths can just pull a list of all those officers with access to that specific safe,” I said, “and one of the names has to be our impostor?”

“Maybe, maybe not,” said Ana. “Again, this bastard’s smart. Infuriatingly so.” Again, she began to pace the room. “Hm…I feel it’s unlikely he’s still in service. Thus, I will need a list ofallofficers who haveeverbeen granted access to that safe. I don’t care if it’s in the dozens or hundreds, we need to check them all.”

A black cloud bloomed in my mind. There was nothing Ana loved more than lists and records, but the Iyalets of the Empire were always notoriously reluctant to give up anything important. Usually I had to put Ana in a room with someone senior and allow her to frighten them witless to get what we needed.

“Think the Apoths will give us that, ma’am?” I asked.

“I’m not done yet!” she snapped. “I want to move to our second attack front before we discuss that. And this one, Din, is a bit heftier…” She plucked a single, haunting chord on her lyre. “For I want to knowallof the reagent thefts that have taken place in Yarrow in the past two years.”

“You wantwhat?”

“It is quite simple. I want a list of every single reagent, every graft, every precursor, everyeverythingthat has been stolen from this godforsaken port town in the past twenty-four months! And I also want to know when and where they were stolen from!”

“But…but, ma’am,” I protested. “Smuggling is so rife here. I can’t imagine how long such a list might be…”