Page 65 of A Drop of Corruption

Then I saw one tall cairn on the eastern side of the shore that stood naked, unadorned with vines. I confirmed it was the only onelike it; in fact, the soil about it was nearly shorn clear of all growth. I had stepped forward to study it when we heard a shout from the other side of the island.

We walked along the shore and found Sabudara and one other warden, pointing at something trapped in the reeds. As I approached, I caught a powerful scent of rot.

“Lasa mari,” said Sabudara. “Dead things. Many.”

I peered at the forms in the reeds. The closer clumps appeared to be the corpses of rats or ground squirrels, yet there were also a few dead fish, pale and swollen, and even the carcass of a snake.

“Not creatures he killed for sustenance,” said Malo. “These died from something else.”

Sabudara then pointed down, closer to the shore. A small cooking cauldron sat half-submerged in the silt and mud, with some broken clay pots about it.

I stooped to examine it. Lying within the cauldron were the muddy remains of large, shelled nuts. They had a waxy sheen even in the dying light of afternoon. Each one was dark brown and bulbous, and capped with a long, drapelike growth that coiled around their shells. My eyes fluttered as I consulted my memories, but I had never seen their like before.

“He’s been boiling these nuts, it seems,” I said. “And left them here.” My gaze shifted to the dead animals floating in the reeds. “The rats ate the remains of these nuts, perhaps, and died. The fish and the snakes tasted the dead rats and died as well.”

“You think he brewed poison?” Malo asked.

“I don’t know,” I said, standing. “But I do think he left something more here.”

“What do you mean?” asked Malo. “We cannot keep searching for hours, not if we need to report the warpings in the clearing.”

“It won’t take long,” I said. I walked to the cairn that bore no vines and shoved it over, sending the stones clattering across the mud. “Provided you have a spade.” I stooped, picked up one of the larger flat stones, and began making scores in the mud where the cairn had stood.

“You think there’s something buried down there?” asked Malo.

“The one stone sculpture with no vines,” I said. “Which means it’s new. So—why?” I stabbed at the mud with the slab of stone again. “Doyou have a spade?”

“Give me a moment,” she said. “I did not realize we’d have to pack an entire camp for this!”

She fetched a tiny spade mostly for putting out campfires, and I made quick work of the soil. Within minutes I felt the tip of the spade stop short on something wooden, and the wardens gathered about me as I hastened to pull it free.

It proved to be a small wooden box, no larger than a hand, tied tight with canal rigger’s twine. I set it on the muddy shore and sat before it to study it.

“Maybe not a good idea to go about opening this man’s shit,” muttered Malo. “I mean—we saw trees turned into fucking tongues back there.”

“It’s been soaking in damp soil for days,” I said. “If it held contagion, it would have bled out by now.”

I cut the twine away with my knife. Then I stepped back, reached forward with the knife’s tip, and flipped the box open.

I stepped back farther, expecting some hiss or pop and a fog of poison to rise up, yet the only thing within the box was a small bundle of cloth, carefully folded.

Again, I stooped and reached out with the knife and parted the folds of cloth. I saw a glittering of silver, then frowned, squatted, and unfolded the rest by hand.

It was a small disc of silver, hard and heavy and cold. It was engraved with the image of a man, grim-faced and sporting a beard in braids, and a narrow circlet set upon his brow.

“Is that a…” said Malo.

I gazed at the large coin, and my eyes began to flutter.

I recalled the morning I’d followed Prificto Kardas to the prison on the outskirts of the city. There I’d met two Yarrow nobles, one of them purple-faced Pavitar, and the other the green-faced Darhi, who’d said to me:It seems a pity for someone with so valiant a task to have comeso far, and alone, only to be sent away…I am moved to grant him a token of my favor.

I reached into my pocket and slid out the coin Darhi had given me, for I’d taken care not to discard it. I held it up next to this new coin. The two were exactly alike.

“A Yarrow oathcoin,” I said quietly.

“By Sanctum, it is!” said Malo. “What inhellwas he doing with one of those?”

I turned each coin over in my hands. The one we’d just dug up was more scuffed and muddied, but it was clear they were about the same age, with little difference between the two.