Page 19 of A Trade of Blood

“What kind of song?”

“Someone singing. Outside our chamber, in the street or the courtyard. It almost seemed to echo from very far away.” A strange light crept into his eyes, as if treasuring a wonderful memory. “But it was the mostbeautifulsound, Iudex. Like the voices of angels, if they were to rise up from the deep mounds where so many lie buried, as the old tales claim.”

I studied his face carefully. I did not see any sign of lie or madness. “What then?”

“The song kept going. It was beautiful, so striking I almost couldn’t breathe. But then Zansay rose and…and turned to face the window. She just stood there for a long while, and then…then the song grew louder in my ears. As if its tones had been meant for her—and then it turned tome.” His eyes grew wide, and his face trembled. “It was like every fiber of the world was singing to me. Every street, every wall, every roof was a reed that danced in the wind, creating this pure tone…All of creation, praising me, whispering to me, as if the stars and moon themselves were singing just for my ears…And then suddenly things smelled…different.”

“What do you mean?”

“It smelled like…the flensing halls,” he said reluctantly.

“How was that so?”

“I don’t know! Honestly, I don’t. But I’ve worked in the flensing halls of my family. My mother obliges us to do this, you see—for the Buravs do this to their own boy, out of the belief it makes him strong, and she’ll be damned if we don’t do the same. I’ve butchered the corpses of many cows and worked there so often, I’ve even dreamed of being trapped in that place. But in that moment, Iudex, it was likeI was back in those halls, yet a shadow version of them. I smelled it, and heard it, and felt…”

He looked down at his hands. I imagined his next words—Felt the wash of blood uponme.

“Then what?” I asked.

“The song kept going,” he whispered. “It kept echoing in my ears. It was like I was filled with light. But then the blurriness faded. The world became real, and I was seeing…her.” He wiped his brow. “Zansay. All cut up. Cutopen,along her stomach. She was so…sowounded.But she didn’t scream. She just gazed quietly at the window, and then she…she lay down. In her blood. On her side. As if lying down for rest. As if nothing bothered her at all in the world.”

There was a long, fraught silence.

“Then I heard the song again,” Castus murmured. “The angels in all things, chanting within the walls, within the stones of the world. And then, suddenly, I was outside. I didn’t remember moving. I looked down. I saw I was bloodied. So I…I cried out and ran.”

I paused to turn this over, feeling it out, sensing the soft spots in his story.

“You don’t remember cutting her?” I asked.

“No.”

“Do you remember drawing the knife?”

“I don’t even remember holding it! I remembernoneof it. It was like the works of a mood graft, or some illness. A dream that comes in the depths of infection. But the Apoths claim my blood is clean.”

I sniffed my vial, embedding this in my memories. “Why did you run to the forest?”

Another hollow laugh. “To pray.”

“Pray to…”

“There are old shrines in the forest. Statues of the Daljen, the great precursors of this land. I was so…so convinced it was all a nightmare. An unnatural curse. I thought if I could find my way to the shrine of Gaddar, master of orchards…” He shook his head. “A mad thought. A childish thought! Yet…”

“Yet what?”

“When I…was in the forest,” he said softly, “I became lost very quickly. Yet I felt certain that I was not…alonein the forest. Someone had followed me.”

“What makes you say this?”

“Things I heard. The snap of twigs about me, the rustling of foliage. The way the night birds stopped calling, as if something had drawn close. But if someone was there, they didn’t approach or attack. Perhaps I imagined it, just like my mind imagined everything else last night.” He wiped his eyes. “The custodi found me at dawn. I’d left a trail of blood, of course, and the wood was so dense that I grew stuck. I was perhaps the silliest villain the custodi have ever caught.” He let out a miserable laugh, then choked and began to sob.

A butchering most curated,Ana had commented. To hear Castus refer to himself as a villain so easily caught caused those words to surface in my thoughts.

“When you worked in the flensing halls, Castus,” I said, “what tasks were you put to?”

“The…the gutting of the cows,” he whispered. “That was what I did this last slaughtering season. The innards are dried and powdered and used by the Apoths in many things, I am told.”

“And how is this done?”