He consults a ledger-sized notepad. “Eleven hundred tomorrow, ma’am.”
Signe smiles at Mulaghesh. “Well. There you go. I do have some information for you as well, General—some that needn’t wait. I put out the alert you requested, notifying all employees to come forward if Sumitra Choudhry had approached any of them. And it turns out she did. She asked one of our medics as to whether or not Voortyashtan had an apothecary—a place where one can purchase all manner of—”
“I know what an apothecary is,” says Mulaghesh. She makes a note of this in her portfolio. “Did she say why?”
“She didn’t, I’m afraid. But our medic told me she was quite eager to buy something. What, she wouldn’t say. Look for the shop with the green door on Andrus Street.”
“Wait, the streets have names here? I didn’t even notice.”
“They’re written in the curbs at corners,” says Signe. They approach yet another checkpoint—this one at the door to the tower test assembly yard—and Mulaghesh hangs back, eyeing the Dreyling guard with the rifling slung over his back. “They use fish bones to spell them out. Anyway, here’s hoping more of my workers come forward with something about Miss Choudhry. Maybe one of them will know something more useful to you.”
Mulaghesh continues taking notes. The giant iron door in the wall swings open. Signe walks through, head buried in her clipboard and whispering notes to herself. She doesn’t even look back as the door swings shut with a tremendous clang.
***
The shop on Andrus Street is really more of a hut, featuring animal-skin walls with seams tightly stitched shut with tendon. The door is a dangling wooden slat painted dull green, its paint cracking. It offers absolutely no insulation against the chilly drafts.
Mulaghesh walks up, knocks three times. Someone inside calls, “Come in!”
She pushes the door aside and finds she is inside of a labyrinth of messy shelves, all curling around her, a cyclone rendered in wood. All the shelves are filled with bottles and jars, most holding blackened and shriveled things that might have once been organic. Others hold seeds, powders, the cores of strange fruits. It takes Mulaghesh a moment to focus on a desk at the other end of the hut, where a small man who’s just as shrunken and withered as his wares is smiling at her.
“Hello, ma’am,” says the little man, “how are you?” His eyes widen, then narrow when he sees her Saypuri uniform. “Beautiful evening, isn’t it?”
“I guess.”
“What can I help you with?” asks the little man. He nods at her arm. “Need a pain poultice for that? I get a lot of sailors from the harbor works here missing all kinds of their bits. I know my way around a stump or two, that I do.”
Mulaghesh pauses, trying to figure out how offended she is by this statement. “No, I—”
“Having women’s issues, then?” He grins. His teeth are like pebbles laced with black lichen. “A lady your age—do you feel the heats upon you? Not an issue at all. I have a—”
“Do you have any poultices that work on a fractured eye socket?” she asks. “Because you’re going to need them if you persist in this line of salesmanship.”
He blinks. “Oh. All right.”
“I’m not here to buy. I have some questions about someone who came here a while ago.”
The little man whistles. “Well, that particular subject matter can be tricky. Very tricksome indeed, unfortunately.”
“Why’s that?”
“Well, it would not be in the interest of my clients or my business if I were to go blabbing about what they buy here.” And then, as if an afterthought: “It’d also be a mite bit dishonest, too, I suppose.”
“This would have been a Saypuri,” says Mulaghesh. “A Saypuri woman, like me. Would this be a different situation, then?”
“I’m offended that you would think me being a Continental would prejudice me against a Saypuri enough to compromise my honesty,” says the little man. “It’s a hurtsome thing to think, honestly.”
Sighing, Mulaghesh slaps a twenty-drekel note down on the table.
The little man pockets it in a flash. “Right,” he says brightly. “So. This Saypuri woman.”
“She would have come in several months ago, at least.”
“That’s as I thought. You’re in luck. We very, very rarely get any Saypuri women in here, so I think I remember the one you’re talking about. Short? Bandage here?” He points to his brow. “Acted like she’d been shut up in a room all day?”
“Sounds like the one.”
“Mmm. Yes, I remember her. Very strange person, she was.”
“What makes you say that?”
“The way she acted,” he says, as if her question was powerfully stupid. “The way she looked at things. I take a pellet of drangla weed every morning—it helps me notice things about people.” He taps the edge of his right eye with a dirt-encrusted finger. “Helps me glimpse the edges of their secret selves. Not easy to make, but I have it reasonably pri—”
Mulaghesh loudly cracks her knuckles against her jaw, bending each finger.
“Right, right. Well. This girl, she made me think of someone who’d come out of hiding, and was counting the seconds until they could sneak away again. She bought some very strange things, too—things I hardly ever sell.” He tilts his head back, eyes closed, thinks, and says, “Rosemary. Pine needles. Dried worms. Grave dust. Dried frog eggs. And bone powder.”
“That’s an impressive memory.”
“Stems from a concoction I make.” He sniffs. “Which I, ah, would never be interested in selling you.”
“Smart move.”
“Of course, it did help that she came back and bought those same ingredients over and over again. Each time in larger quantities, too.”
Mulaghesh makes a note of all this. “And I suppose you wouldn’t know,” she says, “exactly what all this could be used for.”
The little man scratches his head theatrically. “Mm, I might have once known, but the thought escapes me now….”
Mulaghesh puts another twenty-drekel note on the table.
The little man snatches it up. “Well, the reason I never sell any of those items anymore is that their primary use doesn’t exist anymore. In that their primary purpose used to be Divine.”
“I see,” says Mulaghesh.
“Yes. They were popular reagents for performing some of the more mundane miracles, with the sole exception being the frog eggs, as those were more top-tier, I suppose you could say. All of the ingredients she bought were Voortyashtani-oriented: rosemary and pine needles, for their evergreen nature; dried worms, for their regenerative properties; grave dust and powdered bone, for their finality; and frog eggs, for their capacity for metamorphosis. All of these things, you see, deal with the threshold dividing life from death.”
“The domain of Voortya,” says Mulaghesh.
“Uh, yes,” he says, somewhat nervous to be so candidly discussing the sacred.