Page 44 of A Drop of Corruption

“Yes, the stain can be reversed, of course, by a sultur graft applied to the eyes. Little drops you can pop in that eat the green. Not too painful…I wonder why she hasn’t bothered! But regardless, now for the last bit—how did they react when I brought up themarrow?”

“They did not react at all, ma’am. Which I found very curious. In fact, I almost felt like their reaction was…”

“Rehearsed?” she proposed.

“Exactly so.”

“Then they knew the question was coming. I dislike that immensely, Din.” A mad grin crossed her face. “But! At least now we know that Ghrelin and the Apoths here are pursuing a rather conventional brand of obstruction.”

“As…opposed to anunconventional brand, ma’am?”

“Oh, indeed,” she said coyly. “At first I wondered if Ghrelincouldn’ttell us. As in, he was literally incapable of doing so. For did you know, boy, that the Empire has methods of rendering certain secrets unmentionable? Grafts and arts that, when suffused into the body and mind, alter a person in such a way that they arephysically incapableof divulging a specific piece of information?”

“I…had heard rumors of such a practice, ma’am, from time to time. But I thought them only rumor. It seemed far too ghastly an idea for the Empire to ever put into use.”

“Oh, no,” she said, laughing lightly. “It exists but is exceptionally uncommon! The process of achieving this effect is so complex that it can only be done with the subject’sconsent.They mustagreeto this methodology. A strange thing, yes? For…what manner of secret could ever require such measures?”

“Yet…you do not think Ghrelin or the others have undergone such a treatment?”

“No, I do not,” she said rather sharply.

“What makes you so sure?”

“I have witnessed folk altered in such a fashion. Merely nearing the unmentionable subject causes them significant pain. I did not note such pain in Ghrelin.” She flicked a hand, dismissing thesubject. “It was a random aside. Ignore it for now—but dorememberit, Din.”

I blinked, thoroughly bewildered by this, for I always engraved all she ever said. I wondered why she’d said it at all, but then, Ana often said many mad things.

Chapter 19

When we finally arrived atAna’s lodgings, I exited, paid the pilot, and helped her to her front door. There I stopped. “There are three rather large packages here waiting for you, ma’am.” I stooped to look at them. “Appears to be parchments. And I see the Apoth symbol here…”

“They’vealreadysent me the records?” said Ana, agog. “Titan’s taint! I hardly know what to think anymore.”

I helped her inside, then hauled the packages in and opened them, only to discover they were so overstuffed that tiny parchments came spilling out, as if I’d split the seam of a bag of rice. I hastily gathered them back up and sorted them into stacks, and though my accursed eyes struggled with their tiny writing, I saw they were the shipping manifests of every Yarrow barge that had gone missing in the past two years.

Yet one slender envelope emerged from the piles of curling parchment. I fished it out to find Ghrelin’s service record within.

Ana grabbed the copy of Ghrelin’s service record, ripped off her blindfold, and read it. “Hm. His tales all line up. He was indeed working inside the Shroud for three years, but that does not explain the tapping.”

I bustled about her rooms as I began to brew her some tea. “Did the tapping you heard today help?”

“Oh, very much so.” She tossed herself down on her bed like a truculent child. “When you first mimicked his tapping, Din, Irealized that portions of it feltintentionallyrepetitious. Like notes or motifs in a piece of music, perhaps. And then I thought—well, perhaps it wasn’t music! Perhaps it waslanguage.”

I had been trying to start the fire in her stove, but I stopped when I heard that. “As in, a code, ma’am?”

“Precisely! And it was one I was glancingly familiar with. Here…let me see if I can find it…”

She leapt to her feet, paced to her box of books, ripped one out, and flipped through its pages. Then she pounced back over to me and shoved the book in my face. “There. Look familiar?”

I squinted at the pages, the tiny text swimming before my eyes. The book appeared to beHistories of Forgotten Religious Orders,and on the page before me was a bizarre diagram, almost like music notes all set upon one line, with blots of ink, followed by dashes, followed by triple dots.

“It…does not look familiar to me, ma’am,” I confessed. “In fact, I’ve no idea at all what I’m looking at.”

She shut the book with a snap. “Ah. I will go ahead and assume, then, that you arenotfamiliar with the Adherents of the Sallow Fields?”

I waved wearily. “Assume away.”

“Few are, these days,” she said. “They are a sect of monks that practice an unusual vow of verbal silence in their monastery. Much like the earth spirits they claim to worship, they do not speak aloud. Instead, theytap—rapping three fingers in a rhythmic, mathematical alphabet, upon boards they hang about their necks. It’s a tricky way to talk—they have to wait one at a time to tap out their messages, otherwise it gets very hard to hear. Rather unsurprising, then, that their order is quite rapidly dying. Think they’re down to a few dozen now. Poor sods.”