Page 10 of A Trade of Blood

It was at that moment that I felt a profoundly strange sensation, one entirely new to me: something in my thoughts trembled.

Shifted. Like a larva turning over within an egg.

Then I heard a voice, speaking softly but clearly within the chambers of my mind—Not right.

I grunted softly, surprised and slightly pained. I had experienced many strange things as an imperial engraver—to be so cognitively altered meant your mind was no longer wholly your own—but I had never heard voices before.

Nor had I ever felt an impulse as abrupt and definite as the one that had washed through me: the incontestable sense that something in the room before me was not right, though I could not yet define what it was.

The voice and the cerebral convulsion faded from me just as quickly as they’d emerged. I stood holding the doorknob as the sensation drained out the back of my head, feeling both mystified and repulsed.

What hadthatbeen? Had it been a memory, or something else?

Ana’s hand gripped my arm tighter. “I taste,” she murmured, “a bit of hesitation in you, Din. Is all well?”

I thought about it. “N-no. I…don’t think so, ma’am.”

“Something amiss with the scene?”

“I think…maybe, ma’am,” I said slowly. “But I’m unsure what, just yet.”

For the first time in hours, I saw a crinkle of cheerful surprise in her face. “I see! Well. Let us go in, then.”

I shook myself, led her inside, and shut the door.

—

I stood inthe entryway and shot a reluctant glance around the chamber, worried the voice might speak again. My thoughts remained mercifully silent. Perhaps, I hoped, it had been a passing anomaly. Then I surveyed the scene.

A blade of pale sunlight slashed through the shutters, casting one half of the chamber in sharp relief and setting shadows all about the other. I took the space in carefully. It was a simple room, with few unnecessary adornments. A mossbed sat in the corner, one fernpaper sheet piled in its corner. A pot of sotwine stood on the table beside it, and there, half buried in the pillows, two glass cups gleaming like woodbeetles in turf. I could see only one piece of baggage in the room: a small trunk, bound in fungal leathers, with brass corners and a brass latch, unlocked. A narrow border of artful fabric marched about the edge of the leathers, dyed a pale red—the Burav hue. Zansay’s trunk, then.

I looked down at the wide slick of blood. It led away from the body, and toward the wall with the shutter. The girl lay upon its border as if reclining dreamily by the edge of a lake.

Ana sniffed the air. “I catch a hint of jasmine here…perfumed gel. Applied to the body, surely. This was to be a place of delights. I wonder why he felt the need to kill her?” She coughed. “Tell me where to stand, Din. I shall wait for you to do your work.”

I spied a tiny closet built into the corner. “You can stand here, ma’am,” I said. “Before the closet door.”

“Ohh? A closet? Open it and see if there is anything of interest within!”

I did so, peering into the small space. “Empty, ma’am. It was unused.”

“Then I shall sit inside and enjoy the contained quiet while you do your inspecting!”

I led her into the closet (I was not perturbed by this request, for she often climbed within trunks and boxes to think), helped her sit, and then shut the door firmly. Then I turned about, pushed my hair out of my face, and sighed.

Nothing else to be done. I strode across the lake of blood, grimacing as it clicked beneath my bootheels, and knelt to study the body.

She had been a beautiful creature in life. Hardly more than twenty, her dark hair gleaming, her icy gray eyes fixed in an expression of vague confusion, like someone who’d just entered a room and forgotten why they’d done so. Her hair was so thick it was like spun jet, and she had been something of a hirsute thing—there was a glint of soft, dark down along the back of her neck—yet her arms and the backs of her hands were completely exfoliated: an expensive alteration, but one common to the middle and upper class of the Empire, who disdained body hair.

But it was her eyes that were most indicative of her wealth. The girl was clearly of Kurmini stock, who were usually black-haired and dark-eyed, but Zansay’s eyes were a startling, unnaturally bright shade of icy gray. Changing the color of one’s eyes was no cheap thing, even in the third ring of the Empire.

I made note of this, then moved on to review the rest of her.

The wounding had been done to the girl in two distinct acts, the first to the right shoulder, the second to her stomach. The shoulder joint was nearly split through, the narrow muscles of its front and the bicep below severed as the weapon—ablade, surely—had wound its way about the socket. I could even see a wink of bone and ligament within the laceration.

But the stomach was by far the worst of it. The left muscle wall of the abdomen had been sawed through carefully, surely shredding most of her innards as the blade had worked its way down. Theincision turned inward at her pelvis, and then raggedly cut its way across her waist, freeing her intestines of containment. A bundle of dark, gleaming innards had slipped out to pool upon the floor beside her. In the dim light of the room it almost looked like a ribboned bow pinned to the side of her waist.

I sniffed my vial as I studied her injuries, anchoring these sights deep within my memories. Then I narrowed my eyes, thinking.