“Just a few of the psychedelic ones,” she said. “That’d buy me a day away from this boredom.”
“Does the imperial code of conduct apply to the psychedelic mood grafts as well, ma’am? For if so, you already have my answer.”
She squinted at me and plucked a single harsh chord on the situr.
Here it comes, I thought.
“When I performed my duties in the inner rings of the Empire…” she said.
And there it is.
“…my assistant investigators procured all kinds of materials and substances for me!” she finished. “Without question!”
“If you’d like to venture outside, ma’am,” I said, “to visit all the graft merchants you’d like, you’re free to do so. I can’t stop you.”
Her glare hardened. “You know that’s not going to happen.”
“I understand. Too much stimulation for you out there, ma’am.”
“Yes,” she hissed through gritted teeth. “Titan’s taint! Of all the Sublimes who could have been my assistant, why did it have to be the one with a forty-span stick up his ass?”
“Well, technically, you selected me from the list of applicants, ma’am.”
“Then I can unselect you and get someone else!”
“That seems unlikely, ma’am,” I said. “Given that you have interrogated sixty-two officers in Daretana, and most everyone in the canton now thinks you’re mad, finding new Sublimes will probably be difficult.”
She cast her situr aside. It tumbled onto the floor with a dull tonk. “Fuck’s sakes. Fuck’s sakes. How I wish I were back in more civilized lands…”
This was a common conflict of ours: to hear Ana tell it, she’d served as investigator in all the deepest, richest enclaves of the Empire of Khanum, and each one had been madder and more depraved than the last. She kept claiming to be confounded when some illicit material or barbarous act was not easily acquired in Daretana, and acted like it was a backwater hole for failing to provide them within an hour.
Which made one ask the question, of course—why had Immunis Ana Dolabra been appointed here, to the Outer Rim, of all places?
And the only reasonable answer, as far as I could see, was banishment. The role of Iudex Investigator of the Daretana Canton had not even existed as recently as five months ago. They must have invented it as punishment, presumably because transferring her was easier than dismissing her.
Which made sense. I’d only worked for Ana for four months, but you just had to spend one minute with her to realize she had a gift for inciting outrage. It was easy to imagine some elite imperials getting fed up with her and giving her the boot all the way to my far-flung canton, where she could only get one assistant from the selection of local Sublimes.
But I was that Sublime. Assistant Investigator was the only position I’d managed to get, and I would work it underneath Ana’s supervision and receive my dispensation until I was no longer able to collect it. Unless, of course, she got me to do something so illegal that I was discharged straightaway.
“Would you like some tea, ma’am?” I asked.
“No, Din,” she muttered, arm cast over her eyes. “Flavorful as it is, no, I do not want any of your goddamn tea.”
“Then would you like to discuss the death scene, ma’am?”
She lifted her arm and stared at me for a moment, perplexed. Then her face lit up with delight. “Oh! That dead fucker! Right!”
“Right,” I sighed.
“When I got that message from Immunis Irtos,” she said, “I had assumed some goddamn idiot had swallowed the wrong graft or something. That seemed about right for this dull little town. But from your demeanor, Din, I gather it was not?”
“No, ma’am,” I said. “It was not.”
“Then what is interesting about it?”
“A large clutch of trees had spontaneously grown from within the deceased, tearing him apart from the inside, ma’am.” I shuddered. “It was…it was one of the most horrifying sights I’d ever seen in all my life.”
She went totally still. And for the first time that day, all the wild madness in her eyes went dead.
“My goodness gracious,” she murmured. “Did you hear that, Din?”
“Hear what, ma’am?”
“That emotion,” she said.
“Pardon?”
“That was the most emotion I’ve ever heard in anything you’ve ever said, Din! This must be a real corker of a death if it’s cracked your dull demeanor and summoned forth such wild passion.”