A Drop of Corruption

“Moving everything from its location made estimating its value to the investigation much more difficult: a knife found hidden behind a pillow is much more interesting than one packed away in a bag.”

Din here shows that he has been developing investigative skills in the time between the first novel in the series and the second. He is no longer just an engraver whose role is to memorize facts for someone else to analyze; he has become a detective in his own right. This suggests that building these skills will be an overarching character arc in the series.

“‘How do you feel about that?’

‘About what?’

‘Any of it. About the Empire taking over Yarrow. It’s been in the works for almost a century, yes?’

‘I think what most Yarrow folk do,’ [Malo] said simply. ‘I think it was the king’s agreement, made with the Empire for the king’s lands long ago.’

‘Are they not your lands, too.’

A trim smile. ‘Spoken like one who has never known a king.’”

Malo here notes the feeling of helplessness that comes along with living under a corrupt king. While Malo ultimately reveals that she does hold some optimism for Imperial acquisition of Yarrow, her professed ambivalence here shows that she has relatively little faith in any form of leadership. Seeing her country change hands does not inspire Malo to hope that her life will change in any substantive way.

“Though all the Iyalets of the Empire were admired, it was the Legion that held the greatest respect, for it was the Legion that fought back the leviathans each year, holding them at the sea walls, raining fire and death upon them with bombard and ballista. It was they who bore the entirety of the Empire on their backs, these noble warriors adorned in black and silver. It was their suffering and toil and service that ensured that our civilization persisted for another season.

Those who donned the sable uniforms saved untold lives every year, whereas I, in the Iudex, merely looked upon the dead, and could do little else.”

While Din regularly insists that his primary interest in transferring to the Legion is born of his desire to serve, his references here to the respect, uniform, and nobility of the Legionnaires indicates that part of his motivation is his sense of pride, as well. His grandiose images of the Legion are also tied to his former love interest, Captain Kepheus Strovi, indicating that his viewpoint is perhaps more emotional than logical.

“‘I see…But there are two things I can’t make sense of in all you said.’

‘Good!’ she said. ‘I appreciate it when you throw rocks at my ideas, Din. Keeps me from going too far up my own ass. Proceed.’”

Though Ana is often prickly and difficult, her openness to Din presenting problems with her theories shows that she is not unduly burdened with pride. This is important to her vision of justice, which she sees as largely a project against corruption and autocracy. Since Ana is shown as having the power and intelligence to get away with any scheme she desires, this moral clarity prevents her from becoming a powerful antagonist.

“‘And thus the emperor said to his advisers, “We have seen many empires fall, for they did not extend past the breath of their emperors. They decayed, and grew unjust. If I wish this new empire to last, I should not declare to my people that I am the Empire. Rather, I should say to them, You are the Empire. And with that blessing, they shall make a realm for the ages.”‘ She sniffed.

‘All right…but what’s he suggesting by quoting this in a note?’

‘Hell if I know!’ snarled Ana. ‘But it’s quite a fucking statement! […] I disdain it. I disdain it so, all this fucking spectacle! Nothing irks me more than a showy murderer, as if their wretched deeds were some mystical marvel!’”

Ana quotes the Emperor’s letters to give context to Pyktis’s note, left inside the mummified head in the Apoths’ lockbox. The quote indicates that the Emperor recognizes the short-sightedness of autocracy and the danger of self-aggrandizement. Ana’s fury over the idea of a “showy murderer” equates killers with kings and corrupt nobles, all of whom she sees as believing too strongly in their own importance, something that lets them justify harming others.

“For in a way, do we not all sip from the titan’s marrow, in one fashion or another?”

The tension between the human population of Khanum and the leviathans highlights The Price of Progress; while humans need augmentations to avoid being destroyed by the titans, they can only generate these augmentations by destroying the titans. Ana notes that Thelenai’s project to transport the marrow, though a huge and dangerous undertaking, is merely a more extreme version of a project in which the entire of the Empire has already long been complicit.

“‘You’ve grown sharp, Din!’ she said, grinning. ‘How glad I am to see that.’”

Ana’s compliment about Din’s progress as an investigator is, if somewhat backhanded, an indication that she seeks to teach him their craft, not to keep him as a mere assistant. This operates within Ana’s overall lack of self-aggrandizement, something that separates her from many self-important detectives in the mystery genre—and which marks her a contrast to the antagonists of the text, all of whom seek to uplift themselves at the expense of others.

“‘Because we [Apoths] are asked to suffer most,’ said Ghrelin, ‘to provide the most. The alterations we provide…they not only keep the Empire functioning, but they make it far better. Even here, in Yarrow […] Today, though starvation and disease remain present in Yarrow, they are mere ghosts. Because of Apoths like myself, and those I served with, who labored, suffered, and perished within the Shroud. Thus, I cannot imagine that one of my colleagues from these labors might be the perpetrator of these horrid crimes. It is impossible.’”

Ghrelin, the Apoth in the novel who is presented as the truest believer in the work of the Shroud, here lays out his reasoning for why the dangerous, arduous work of the Imperials in Yarrowdale is worth the vast human cost. Ghrelin lists the benefit to the people of Yarrow—who resist and often scorn Imperial magic—rather than the benefit to the Empire itself, illustrating his altruism. This contrasts him with Thelenai, who admits to undertaking the marrow project for the benefit of her own pride. Ghrelin’s goodness is upheld in the end of the novel, as Thelenai is punished for her role in the project, while Ghrelin is not.

“‘I suspect that when the times comes, you may not wish to transfer [to the Legion].’

‘Why not, ma’am?’

‘Because you are a reasonably smart boy. I suspect you shall come to realize what many Iudexii eventually learn—that though the Legion defends our Empire, it falls to us to keep an Empire worth defending.’”

Ana here offers a shortened version of the explanation she gives at the end of the text on The Importance of Stopping the Spread of Corruption. She considers the moral defense of the Empire even more important than its physical defense, a position that Din comes to also embrace.

“Malo snorted. ‘This idiot’s not going to understand that shit.’”

Malo frequently serves as the voice of the people in the novel, particularly the Yarrow people who have been caught between their autocratic king and the slow march of Imperial progress. Here, however, she shows that she still maintains her own prejudices, as she considers the swamp-dwelling smugglers to be unintelligent, not just uneducated, by virtue of their class.

“Thelenai stared in naked outrage. ‘You are in no position to make demands! I am the ranking officer here, and this is an emergency!’

Ana shot forward. ‘And we are not formally in the Empire!’ she said. ‘That’s been quite a useful loophole for you, hasn’t it, ma’am? Some rules can be obeyed, others less so. How shall it go when I try the same?’”

Thelenai’s fury at finding herself on the receiving end of the strategies she used to enact the quasi-legal augury project shows that she understands that her behavior was, if not illegal, at least immoral. Thelenai is more clear-sighted about her errors than is Din for most of the text, which illustrates how Din’s moral growth is ongoing, unlike Ana’s moral fixedness.

“‘[With the marrow] we could even heal our Sublimes,’ said Ghrelin. ‘Many of us are plagued by mental afflictions as we grow old and lead short lives. With an abundance of kani, we could change even that.’

I had listened to all this with a mix of wonder and horror, but that caught my attention. I had seen engravers grow old and mad well before their natural age, afflicted by hallucinations and dreams; to hear that the Empire could be laboring even now to save me from that fate filled me with wonder.”

Din’s reaction to learning about the marrow shifts when Ghrelin reports how Din himself might benefit from the marrow project. Though Din sees both the personal gain and the wider benefit to citizens of Khanum, his awe comes most forcefully from the sense that the Empire cares about his plight.

“That was it, then. I was doomed. We’d have to catch Pyktis in twenty days, or I’d catch some vile blot of contagion while within that unholy veil and be transmuted into something unspeakable. My family would go bankrupt, and all the grand machinations and systems of the Empire would spin on, and I would be ground to dust, and go forgotten.”

Din’s fatalism about the Shroud is only partially about dying horribly. More acutely, he feels the sense that his death will be pointless. Din’s fear that he is insignificant—and that his work is insignificant—in the grander scope of the Empire highlights his recognition that his life, like anyone else’s, might simply be reckoned as part of The Price of Progress.

“‘Ah, there you forget one of the foremost rules of the Empire, girl,’ said Ana. ‘An augmented person is still a person—even the fabled, lost Khanum!—and thus they are weak in predictable ways.’”

Ana here comments about the universal fallibility of man to reassure Malo that Pyktis, no matter how brilliant, is not impossible to catch. Her reference to the “fabled, lost Khanum” foreshadows the reveal that Ana is one such Khanum, but she recognizes that even this status does not mean she is infallible.

“‘The king is obliged to grant any oathcoin boon asked of him, true. But once he has done so, the king may then have the person who asked killed or tortured, if he thinks the demand was too great, or too impertinent.’

‘He’d…he’d have them executed?’ I asked, shocked.

Malo shrugged. ‘He is the king. There is no law saying he cannot do so, He is the law, for he is the crown.’

‘Ahh.’ Ana grinned horribly. ‘The illusion of shared power, as opposed to the real thing…yes, that’s much more manageable for a tyrant!’”

Malo here notes the limits of the oathcoin’s supposedly great value by highlighting that though the coin grants its bearer temporary power, this power means little compared to the king’s permanent, autocratic authority. Malo’s own history, as a former naukari who was freed by an oathcoin request, shows that this power is not entirely meaningless. Ana’s point that this illusion of power is a valuable tool to a tyrant highlights The Dangerous Allure of Autocracy. An autocrat’s power depends on the illusions and narratives they weave around themselves, something the novel consistently supports.

“[The king’s hall], however, felt beautiful and eternal. A stunning sight to a person like me, from an improvised Empire that often felt so blandly bureaucratic.”

Din’s impression of the trappings of monarchy as being “eternal” merely because they are old parallels the underlying logic that the pro-monarchy characters like Pavitar present when they argue that having a king rule Yarrow is “natural.” This implication that something is good and should continue merely because it has been in place for a long time is thematically contrasted with the ever-changing Empire that, if “bland” and “bureaucratic,” at least consistently proves willing to try to improve itself.

“Regarding the wardens and the naukari, I personally find the situation reprehensible. But good governance is about choosing the least bad option. Invading and holding Yarrow, well…is not that. Yet do not despair! There may be options less foul than the ones presented to us.”

Ana here expresses a philosophical view that best aligns with utilitarianism, or an ethical philosophy that urges choices that provide the maximal benefit to the maximum number of people. When it comes to the political situation between Yarrow and the Empire, this leads her to support Kardas’s anti-acquisition position—even if it does cause significant harm to the most downtrodden people of Yarrow.

“And [the Shroud] moved. It rippled and shifted, billowing in one long, undulating flex from end to end, over and over. It was so strange, and beautiful, and artful; yet there was a subtle terror to it, and to look upon it set something crawling behind my eyes.”

The Shroud is characterized by descriptions that allude to the sublime, a philosophical concept commonly used to characterize something that is awe inspiring, beautiful, and terrifying. (Edmund Burke’s A Philosophical Enquiry into the Sublime and Beautiful is a core text that describes and has influenced the sublime in the literary tradition.) The sublime is the primary affective response that Din experiences when encountering the major works of the Empire.

“‘People worshipped [the titans] as gods once […] ‘And I cannot blame them,’ Ghrelin continued. ‘These giant, inexplicable things, thundering ashore, bringing so much death and strangeness with them. That’s what faith and the divine is, isn’t it? A line stretching from little beings like us, to the ineffable, the incomprehensible.’”

Ghrelin processes the sublimity of the Shroud and the titans as a form of divinity, though his attributing this connection to people of the past suggests that he wishes to maintain distance from this viewpoint. This attitude highlights the overlap between magic and science in Khanum, as seen in the Khanum people’s ability to dissect and document every aspect of the titans and yet their total inability to understand their nature or motivations.

“We built this, I thought. We have built this unnatural thing, and has built us in turn.”

Din characterizes the Shroud—and, symbolically, the entire project of augmentations in the Empire—as “unnatural” but cooperative. The novel does not necessarily treat “unnatural” as synonymous with bad: The Yarrow monarchy, for example, justifies its corrupt autocracy by invoking the “natural” rule of kings. Yarrow’s court does not survive at the end of the novel, but the unnatural Empire does. To survive, the Imperials thus must find a way to collaborate with the titans who menace them, even if that collaboration is dangerous, based in violence, and perpetually uncertain, illustrating The Price of Progress.

“Still, she tapped, and still he spoke, whispering beside me: ‘You are wrong, you are wrong, you are wrong! This was not predicted! You are wrong, wrong, you must be wrong!’”

The augurs’ horror at the possibility that they might have incorrectly interpreted Pyktis’s motivations shows that, for all their brilliance at detecting patterns, their hubristic faith in their own infallibility constitutes a major weakness. The novel contrasts this with Ana, who encourages Din and others to find flaws in her logic. This willingness to be wrong helps her grow, which, in turn helps her defeat Pyktis.

“I also shed myself of my traditional blue cloak and garbed myself in blacks and grays, and tied down every metal buckle and clasp to ensure that it made no sound and would catch no moonlight in the trees. It was a queer thing to transform myself in such a fashion: no longer an instrument of justice but rather stealth and violence.”

Din’s change in attire here is to blend in with the wardens as they seek Darhi, but his shift from Iudex blue to black is the same shift in uniform he would make if he transferred to the Legion, as he plans to do. That he finds this “a queer thing” to “no longer [be] an instrument of justice” foreshadows his decision to stay with the Iudex and indicates that his perspective on the value of the Iudex has already changed, an important part of his character arc.

“‘How small-minded it all was…’ Ana shook her head. ‘You’d deny the imperial people so much healing, so much advancement. You’d rule over a nation of slaves and slavers. All for gold. For a golden crown, and a throne, and a little bit of money.’

‘No,’ said Pyktis […] ‘[My father] was…he was so old, and so weak. Just a man. Just a doddering old fool. It had all been a…a story.’

‘What had?’ asked Ana.

‘Kings.’ Pyktis shuddered. ‘For so long I was told they were wondrous fathers, farsighted rulers touched by the divine. The natural rule of strength, of crown, of throne—a noble thing, unlike the Empire, so unnatural and invented. But when I looked upon my father, I saw they are just…men. Little men with muddy, ugly little minds, who fall to corruptions just like anyone.’”

Pyktis confesses here that he hatched his plan to take over the kingdom of Yarrow after being dissatisfied when his father did not live up to the narrative of kingliness with which Pyktis had been raised. The fact that he does not disavow this narrative but instead thinks himself above its potential for failure—that he will never become old or weak—shows that he still has fallen for the myth that autocrats circulate about themselves.