JUST BEFORE DAWN I SLIPPED out of the girl’s house to return to my
own lodgings, exhausted and tottering. A fog was crawling out of the bay, so
thick it was hard to see more than fifty span down the road, yet I’d engraved
the path in my mind and knew the steps, even if I half-sleepwalked them
now.

When I finally approached my lodgings, I heard a voice ring out of the
fog: “What have you been up to?”

I stopped and spied Signum Tira Malo sitting on the stoop a few span
down from my door. She smiled at me, her teeth dark from yet another lump
of hina root.

“You’ve been waiting at my door?” I said, surprised.

“You said sunup,” she said, and gestured to the overcast skies. “The sun is
almost up. I must say, I was confused to hear no heartbeats within your
lodgings, nor the whisper of any breath. But to see you now, and…” She
sniffed the air as I approached, and grinned. “…and to catch the scent of you,
all is clear.”

I scowled at her. “Do you pry in the affairs of all who walk this street?”

“I do no prying! Would you have me stop up my ears and nose to keep
your privacy? But do not feel shame, Kol. If anything, I am amazed.”

“What?”

“Why, you were so serious and frowned so much yesterday, I wondered if
you had any blood in you at all. Yet obviously, you have that, and more—if
it’s not all spent! How have you already managed to bed another? Have you
even been here a full day?”

- A Drop of Corruption, Chapter 9 pg. 71