Page 105 of A Trade of Blood

I recognized the contents immediately. I’d learned very early on in my service to Ana to memorize everything I could on all substances, reagents, tinctures, grafts, and tonics that were banned for use in the Imperial Iyalets—but especially the psychotropic ones, of which she was terribly fond.

“Semilanka mushrooms,” I said. “Basidia. And auricula. Are you…getting yourself mooded before I depart for the forest, ma’am?”

“Quiet, boy,” she snapped.

She produced a knife and began carving very small slices off each mushroom. A dread arose in me then. There had been a time, once, when Ana had consumed a great deal of psychotropic substances, and that had been when she needed to access some aspect of her faculties I could not comprehend. It was as if there were parts of her mind that she could only use occasionally, and only by consuming substances that would usually kill any common folk.

This, perhaps, was by design. For Ana had been conditioned—consensually, I knew—so that she could not discuss certain subjects without inflicting pain upon herself. Perhaps now, I thought as I watched her dice away in the vault, she was using these substances as a means to bypass those controls.

But why, I did not know. What subject was so unspeakable that she was forced to resort to this—and now, of all times?

She swallowed the tiny slices of mushrooms and let out a long, slow sigh. “I’ve a confession, boy,” she said. “I have not been honest with you. Or, notentirelyhonest.”

I waited.

“You did not gasp in surprise, I note,” she said.

“I did not, ma’am. You use the truth like a basket-weaver might a reed.”

“Perhaps so. But I will attempt some honesty with you now, Din—for I know a bit more about the Daljen than I let on. Perhaps…” She grunted as if in pain. “…perhaps more than most other folk in the Empire.”

Her face trembled. Plainly, whatever she wished to say to me was one subject that had been conditioned in her to be unspeakable.

“Ma’am,” I said. “Do you really wisht—”

“Quiet. You deserve to hear this. For I suspect that whatever lies buried in those strange woods…it isnotwhat killed the Daljen. To tell you more would require explaining a little…Well. Ancient history.”

There was a long silence. When Ana spoke again, her voice was queerly deep and resonant, as if echoing in some other space within her.

“In the earliest, most ancient of days,” she began, “there was the valley of the Khanum. At that time, it was no holy site. Rather, it was an accursed spot of creation. A place warped by the bloods of the leviathans—for it was there that the leviathans journeyed each wet season, toiling from the seas and across the Paths of the Plains to rest their bones, and causing endless devastation as they did so. Even today, we do not know why they did this. Nor do we know why theykeepattempting to do so. But we do know that to the ancient peoples, the valley of the Khanum was a poisoned place, where none could venture—except the poor, the exiled, and the tribes driven from their lands by the petty kings. For these folk, of course, had nowhere else to go.” She leaned forward. “Thisis where the story of the Khanum begins, Din. Not in power—but in misery, indisplacement.They were forced to seek shelter in the valley. And when they emerged, they had been changed.”

My eyes fluttered, and the stone visage of the statue in the wood flashed in my mind: a face long and distended, with a high, peaked skull.

“It was in their first victories that the Empire was founded, of course. But what is less known is what happened just after.” She leaned forward, her visage skeletal in the light. “As I said before, therewere the Daavir—the line of our emperor. They were warriors and fought the titans. Then there were the Daljen, who were farmers and tamers of nature. One to fight, and one to feed. Yet then, suddenly, the Daljen simply vanished!”

“I had thought they were the first to succumb to the plague of sterility among that line…”

“No, child! This is not so. They did not dwindle, as all the other tribes of the Khanum did. They completelydisappeared,right at the end of the fifth century! And unlike the rest of the peoples of the Khanum, there is almostnoremaining record of their last days. We’ve scraps of texts, and a few stone statues standing amid the plains, and nothing more.” She waved at the books along the shelves. “The religious pantheon of the Daljen is but aninvention,Din. An aristocratic cult, invented over the past five centuries! The people who worship the Daljen here have no concept of who they were or what they did in life. And yet…I’ve long felt that there was a clear explanation for what happened to them. There is a corollary here, with the Armentas and the Buravs.” She turned to me. “You have pursued many crimes, Din. You know the shape of this, yes?”

There was a long silence. I felt my pulse flickering in my hands.

“The Daavir and the Daljen,” I said slowly. “Two competing, wealthy houses…”

“Yes.”

“They came to conflict.”

“True.”

“And only one was victorious.”

“Utterlyvictorious, Din. So much so that theywiped the otherfrom all the history books and replaced their cherished lands with altered forest! After all…why salt the soil when you can fill it up with impassable trees?”

I swallowed. “You…are talking about genocide now, ma’am. A massacre and a conspiracy. And if known it…it would be…”

“An indictment of all the Empire, yes,” she said softly. “Many consider the Khanum to be a founding myth of who we are, akin to angels who gifted us arts from the very heavens! If any learned they werecapable of such acts—especially the tribe of theemperor himself—well…we would begin thinking of them as fallible. As cruel. Ashuman.And that cannot do.” She took in a long, slow breath. “But we are Iudex, Din. We seek the truth. I tell you this now not to frighten you, but towarnyou. You shall be entering the site of a tremendous crime today. There may be many horrors awaiting you within. So—step lightly, boy!”

Chapter 28