Page 86 of A Drop of Corruption

Ana had never cared much for grooming or dress. Indeed, she changed garments so rarely that I’d come to believe she often forgot she wore clothes at all. Yet the person sitting on the bed before me was arrayed in a stunningly precise expression of imperial dress uniform code: her blue dress coat was buttoned to her chin, her skirts were smooth and properly arranged, and her pale white hair was pulled back in a taut, severe bun, punctured by a golden-headed hairpin. There was no sign of food or fluid about her lips; indeed, the only signs of her usual madness were the red blindfold about her eyes—of course—and her heralds, which I noticed were arranged in an alternating pattern of small and large, and thus went against Iyalet code.

“Yes?” demanded Ana. “What about these damned bells, Din?”

I attempted to recover. “Ma’am, ah…I have been told that those bells possibly signify that—”

“That the king of Yarrow,” she snapped, “is dead as a fucking boiled scallop?”

“I…How did you—”

“I assume you gleaned this rather insightful bit of cultural information,” she hissed, “from the Pithian girl who fucked you halfway across the room and back last night—yes? Despite my very strict and clear orders that yourest?”

The tolling bells seemed to dampen somewhat. “Ah,” I said. “Well, ma’am…”

“I not only heard every thump,” growled Ana, “but I am sure everyone up and down the street did as well! Perhaps we should have charged bypassers a half talint for the show! I mean, titan’s taint, Din! I don’t even know why I bother giving orders anymore, as all theimperial ears about me seem incapable of listening! Have you at least assembled your dress uniform, as I requested?”

I blinked blearily. Though I recalled wearing my dress cap last evening, it had not been related to the preparations of my uniform.

“You…you asked us to prepare our uniforms,” I said, “because you had already anticipated the next murder.”

“I would have thought that fucking obvious!” thundered Ana. “WeknewPyktis had produced poison, there in his den! We knew he had an oathcoin, suggesting he’d been to the High City before! And we knew he’d likely seen the smokes in the jungle and would know that we’d found his macabre little display! Thus, he has begun thenextbit of his game! And though I was not certainwhomhe would choose to attack, I had a reasonable expectation ofwhereit might occur, and how we might have to array ourselves to move within that celebrated space!” She sighed. “Though to find now that it may be the king himself slain…well, I will say this about Pyktis—the fucker does not lack ambition! Now, damn it, get dressed, boy, and quickly! For I suspect we must go to question some courtly folk, and that damned soon!”

IV

Death in the High City

Chapter 32

Almost instantly, the day seemedto unravel like a cheap fishing net.

To begin with, the bells did not stop tolling for over three hours, which meant all discussions in Yarrowdale had to be bellowed at close distance in order to be heard. But secondly, nobody knew exactly whom to ask about the bells or what could have happened there in the Elder West, for the only people who ever spoke with the high court of Yarrow were Prificto Kardas and his Treasury folk, and they, Malo discovered, were all missing from their quarters.

“They went up to meet with the court yesterday, ma’am,” Malo reported to Ana. She groggily dug in her eye with a finger, and continued: “Not a one of them was left behind, and we’ve heard not a thing from them since.”

“And that shouldnotbe so, I assume?” asked Ana.

“No, ma’am. They were expected to return late last night.” She swallowed. “But…I did check to see if Kardas had perhaps responded to your letter, ma’am.”

“And?”

Malo slipped out a scroll of parchment, darted forward, and handed it to her. “This is the response. I’ve not yet breached it. But…it has an odd look to it.”

I looked Malo over while Ana studied the scroll. She had not only hastily rummaged up her own Apoth dress uniform—dark crimson with brown piping and bright brown leather epaulets—but she hadalso apparently oiled her hair and combed it straight back in a slick, shiny cascade. She looked about as comfortable in her formal clothes as a sallow-cat in a river, and her bearing was not at all improved by the obvious fact that she was frightfully hungover.

Ana cracked the scroll open, then felt it with her preternaturally sensitive fingers, sightlessly reading every scrawl. “Well, well!” she said bitterly. “What luck! This scroll is addressed tothe representatives of the Imperial Iudex! I believe that’s you and me, eh, Din?”

“True, but…those do not sound like Kardas’s words, ma’am. Who composed it?”

Ana sniffed as her fingers kept probing the slip of parchment. “Why, it is from Prince Camak di Lalaca, heir to the throne of the realm of Yarrow. He requests our prompt presence at court.”

There was a stunned silence, broken only by a miserable belch from Malo.

Ana kept reading. “It seems our job may already be done,” she said lightly. “For though the king did indeed perish under mysterious circumstances, they have captured a suspect and now hold him captive!”

“They…they captured Pyktis?” I said.

“Oh, no. They have capturedPrificto Kardas.They believe it ishewho killed their king! And they would like to execute him.” She stuffed the note into my hands and said, “Read it yourself!”

I peered at the note and struggled to read it. It was written in a small, outrageously sloppy hand, suggesting the writer was either poorly educated, ignorant of imperial standard, or both.