Excerpt
A Drop of Corruption
Chapter 1I’d thought the jungles of the eastern Empire to be oppressively hot, but as I sat in the prow of the little canal boat and felt the sweat slip down my brow, I decided the north was, without question, far worse. The final leg of our journey had been almost entirely shaded by the dense tree canopies, yet even in the coolest shadows, the jungle underbrush perpetually steamed, as if all the world was just shy of boiling. My blue Iudex coat had been soaked in sweat from collar to cuff for nigh on three days now, so much so that I left a wet print where I sat. Not a fine first impression to make for the officer waiting for me.
We made one last bend around the canal and finally approached the Yarrowdale waterfront. Even at this early hour, the piers were swarming with vessels: tiny fishing junkers and lumbering barges and merry little oyster cogs—as well as some unusual craft I’d never seen before.
I eyed these as we approached the piers. They were unwieldy, low-bellied boats with thick stonewood walls fastened to their sides, yet the walls sparkled with glints of hammered iron. I realized they were stubbled with arrowheads lodged deep in the wood, the shafts splintered or cut away. It was as if each craft had withstood a half-dozen volleys mere moments ago. An odd sight in so quiet a place.
I disembarked, my bag thrown over my shoulder, and stood on the busy waterfront, peering about for the imperial officer assigned to meet me here.
Yet no one appeared. There were the fisherfolk, lined at the piers and looping nets about their arms, half-naked with their pale flesh burned dark from the sun. There were a number of indigents, filthy and with matted hair, who sat at the edge of the waterfront bowed like religious supplicants. There were many Engineers, returning from the canals so mummified in mud you could hardly spy the purple of their uniforms. And last were the many Apothetikal soldiers, who stood on guard with their crimson Apoth capes about their shoulders and their spears clutched tight in their hands, watching the crowds with hard, brittle eyes.
I noted their pose, their tension. Strange to see Apoths assigned to guard duties: they were usually more concerned with tinctures and reagents. I glanced again at the scarred, armored boats rigged up along the piers, and wondered exactly what had been going on here in the port town of Yarrowdale.
I waited for twenty minutes at the piers, the air roiling and steaming, the jungle beyond sighing as the wind tousled the trees, but I did not see my officer. I silently cursed the Empire’s much-delayed and always-confused communications. Perhaps they’d told them the wrong day.
I trudged off, my bag on my back, headed for the Yarrowdale ossuary, for that was where the corpse was stored. Yet as I started down the road, I paused.
Just past the start of the road there was a small hillock, dotted with barri trees with thick turf gathered about their roots, and there, lying in the middle of the turf, was a young woman, wearing a hooded cloak with her fingers clasped over her belly like she was deep in restful slumber. Her trousers and boots were so congealed with mud they were now little more than clods of soil, but the color of her cloak was Apoth crimson.
And there, at her breast: a few winking heralds. The bars of an imperial signum, just like myself.
I had been told an Apoth signum would be waiting for me here. I approached her, hoping I was wrong.
I’d planned to clear my throat to wake her once I was near, but when I was within ten span of her she spoke aloud, her Yarrow accent as thick as pudding: “Can I help you?”
“I was told I was to meet an Apoth signum here,” I said. “Might that be you?”
She opened her eyes and looked at me. She was quite young and short, a pale, pink-skinned, broad girl, with short, greasy hair stuck to her scalp. Her eyes were very round, and the whites of them had a greenish tint to them—a common feature of Yarrow folk of the region—but the flesh about them was purpled, as was the flesh of her ears and nose: a sign of significant augmentations. It was likely the girl could hear every beat of my heart and smell every drop of sweat upon my body.
“Oh!” she said. She looked me over, still lying flat on the grass. “I thought you’d smell more expensive.”
“I . . . What?”
She propped herself up on her elbows. “I have been smelling the breeze, waiting for you. Inner ring officers always have a very expensive aroma. Lots of oils in their hair, and their skin so perfumed. Yet you do not smell as this.” She squinted at me. “So. You are the Iudex officer who is here to help us with our mysterious dead man?”
“I am,” I said. I gave her a short bow. “I am Signum Dinios Kol, Iudex Special Division.”
She looked me over but said nothing.
“And you are?” I asked.
“Did you eat dried fish on your journey here?” she asked.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Dried fish. Did you eat a slice or two of this today? Perhaps one spiced with coriander?”
“I . . . Well, yes? Why?”
“Mm,” she said, nodding sagely. Then she stood, bowed, and said, “Signum Tira Malo, Warden of the Apothetikals. I apologize for not giving you a finer greeting, Kol. The true Empire lies a long way from here. Sometimes we forget its touch.”
“Is it common for Yarrow officers to just lie about on riverbanks in the morning?”
“Lie about?” she said. “I was attempting to dry.” She extended an arm into the sun, and ghostly flickers of steam arose from her sleeve. “I have had a long night’s work on the canals and in the swamps, trying to comprehend more about how our dead man came to be so very dead. It was dirty work, and useless, but will get dirtier still.” She looked over my shoulder. “I thought there’d be two of you.”
“My immunis shall come in her own time,” I said. “I presume there are lodgings assigned for us?”
“Of course. My comrades shall take care of her, when she comes.” She nodded toward the folk I’d taken to be indigents, seated at the waterfront. I realized now they were also bound in Apoth cloaks, as muddy as they were. “But before we go—would you prefer to vomit here, out of doors, Kol? Or would you prefer to wait?”
I stared. “I’m sorry?”
“The scent of fish on your breath,” she said. “It is not decent. I think the fish has turned sour, and whoever served it to you spiced it so you could not taste it. I give it, oh, about an hour until your stomach starts burbling, and then it shall come up.” She turned to me, smiling lazily. “It will not be helped by the ossuary. It is a difficult place, even if one’s stomach is as still as stone. And especially given the state of our dead man.”
I pressed my hand against my stomach, thinking she had to be wrong. But then there, in some crevice of my belly: did I feel the slightest unpleasant flutter?
I glared at her. “You make many assumptions, Malo. I am fine, and ready to begin our work.”
“Are you,” she said lightly. “Very good, then! Let us go to the ossuary and do our filthiness there.”
The Yarrowdale ossuary did not put me at ease: between the low, vaulted ceilings and the distant mutterings of other Apoths, the building felt much like a catacomb, and worst of all, the dank air reeked of a vaguely musky yet awful scent.
“You are a lucky man, Kol,” Malo said as we walked its passages. “You know this?”
“Why is that?”
“They recently did a purge of our samples,” she said. “Tossed out all the ones well past their term, for we can only preserve them for so long. The air in here is now like a spring meadow, compared to how it was last month.”
I pressed a knuckle to my nostrils. “How can anyone bear it?”
“A simple answer.” She stopped to grab a cart on high spoked wheels and began pushing it along with us. “Most don’t.”
I looked Malo over as we walked. She did not seem bothered by our surroundings in the least: she sauntered along, chewing languidly on a piece of hina root—a minor stimulant—which gave her mouth a blackish tinge. She’d hung her cloak up at the door, and I saw now that she sported not only a short sword sheathed at her side, but two knives in her belt, one in her boot, and a little one sheathed at her wrist. I wondered exactly what her duties were, to require such strength of arms.
Finally we came to a little cupboard door at the end of the hall. “Here he is,” she sang.
She opened the cupboard door. I braced myself, yet the only thing within was a wooden box, about ten smallspan tall and three span wide and long: not much larger than a Legionnaire’s shield. Malo grasped the box and slid it out onto her rolling cart, the spindly spokes of the wheels creaking with the new weight.
I studied the shallow wooden box.
“I had thought,” I said slowly, “I was coming to review a body.”
“A what?”
