Page 130 of A Trade of Blood

Again, a soft rain began to fall. The gray, shimmering veil swept over us, turning the statue above into a hazy blur.

“When we first entered the wood,” I said, “I’d thought the altered forest and the Touched Site was an attempt to hide the crimes of the Daavir. But this isn’t so, is it?”

“No, I believe you are right,” said Ana. “I rather think they sought to hide the works of the Daljen. They didn’t want anyone trying this mad shit again. Better to let it go forgotten—yet now we’ve dug it up again.” She extended her hand, allowed a smattering of raindrops to pool in her palm, and tipped it over into her open lips. “The Empire has changed enormously in the five centuries since. We’ve grown stronger, we grow resources at unprecedented rates, we fend off the leviathans year after year—more or less—and, perhaps most of all, we have gone from a few hundred folk bearing the blessings of alterations to thousands upon thousands. Though the first imperials were great in their own way, we are far more civilized than those first wild, mad centuries. But…the temptation to believe one’s self superior does not appear to fade. And what we do to the beasts in the field we may still one day do to our very kin.”

“But the Daavir resisted the temptation, didn’t they?” I asked. “And they destroyed the Daljen as punishment.”

She laughed lightly. “Oh, no, not quite, Din. The Daavir were no righteous vindicators. They werepragmatists.Slavery and thedomination of the will make a very poor foundation for a people. Slave states fester, stagnate. Then topple. Many of the elder race sported a keen eye and great cunning, but the Daavir had an unusual talent—with one intuitive glance, they could peer into the past and future about them, and judge with precision. They saw what awaited the Daljen and chose another path.”

“What path did they choose?” I asked.

She opened her mouth to answer. Then she shut it and tilted her face to the rain.

“It is getting quite wet, Din,” she said. “Please, find me some shelter, and wave down a carriage so we can return to town.”

—

Together we walkedour way back along the path through the wood, Ana gripping my arm as I trudged forward on aching feet, the Orbiis mask upon my face to keep the fumes from my mind. I gave her my shootstraw hat to keep the rain off her head, then sighed deeply, wondering what it would be like to return to Lacanthim after all this.

“Stupid boy,” Ana said softly.

“Beg pardon, ma’am?”

“I did tell you not to get involved with him. I knew how it would end! How often must I prove my brilliance to you, and yet still you ignore it!”

“I am a simple thing, ma’am,” I said. “I suppose my heart is simple, too.”

“That is not true. Yet you may take a rest, if you wish, Din. I shall give you two weeks’ leave. I suspect you will need it to help your sister, and her betrothed. It is no easy thing to start a new life, especially when your old one has broken asunder. Perhaps you shall have to go home with her for a time—though I can understand if you are reluctant to do so. Seeing one member of your family can be hard, as I can attest. Seeing all of them at once, I imagine, is quite another thing.”

I thought about that. “A question, ma’am.”

“Yes?”

“You said that as engravers mature, their memories can take on personalities. Visages. Appearances.”

“Some do. What of it?”

“Well—do they change much? Or do they always stay the same person?”

“What a very strange thing to say! No. No, I do not think they change. Why do you ask?”

“Just a question.”

She tilted her head toward me, as if she could hear the fluttering of my heart. “Fine, then! I shall leave you your secrets. I know I’ve no shortage of my own.”

We ambled along, my heart heavy with what I’d seen, and my head full of worries for what I might see next. For I felt Ana was right: it seemed all too likely that Fotia and Ippeas would flee Lacanthim and recuperate with my own family in the little town of Rimula, with my sisters and grandmother.

They would ask me to follow them, and I was not sure I could. Partially because of all the resentments and memories I held from those unhappy days—but also because of this latest development.

I recalled that first night I’d met Fotia, and she had said:Do you remember what Mother looked like, Din? I don’t. All I had was that stone in the wood, and little more.

Yet I did recall our mother. She sometimes returned to me in fragments and remnants, like tea leaves washing into one’s mouth at the last sip. Tiny snatches and slivers, embedded in my soul just like the smell of a Tala rain.

And now, of course, I had seen and heard her more recently.

Why, I wondered, of all the faces my memories could have chosen, had they decided to manifest with the face and voice of my mother, dead for nearly two decades now? Why choose to appear as her, seated upon the bed of the Green Drover, smiling so earnestly at me? And how could I return to my family with her ghost haunting me so closely?

I did not know. Perhaps I’d muddle through, just as Ana had said the Empire so often did.