Page 31 of A Trade of Blood

“My work is an ugly thing,” I said quietly as I sipped my wine.

“I see that now. Will it be ugly here as well, with Castus?”

“It is already, Fo.”

She sighed. “This isn’t how I’d wish to meet you, brother! Emerging from the rainy shadows, here to hang my friend. By hell…willyou hang him, Din?”

“The evidence is not at all in his favor,” I said. “But that’s what I wished to speak to you about—youandyour Ippeas. Because Castus’s motivations are very…strange to us. We are working to understand them.”

She was watching me very closely. “Very strange, you say?”

“Yes.” I blinked—the sackwine was weighing on me heavily now—and tried to think of how to say neither too much nor too little. “In that we can’t figure out what they were at all. I wanted to speak to Velona Armenta to ask her about her son—and themisfortunes of her other children. There is…ah, more to understand here. It’s a mad thing to ask, but—can you help me meet her, Fo?”

Fotia leaned in slowly, eyes fixed on me. She did not speak for a long time.

“What?” I said.

“I can’t believe it,” she said softly.

“Can’t believe…”

“You don’t think he did it,” she said. “Do you?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You didn’tsayit,” said Fotia. “But I can smell it on you. For one thing, if you had been talking to Trikao, then I know he’d have told you he’d let you do no such thing. Very few speak to Velona now, and he’s protective of her—especially when it comes to the deaths of her children. Yet you persist. You wouldn’t bother if it was some cursory questioning you needed to do. You expect to find something important from her.”

“Yes, butI—”

“Butmore so,” she said, her wild smile returning, “Iknowyou, brother. Remember when that fox had kits in the woodpile behind our house? And you stumped around claiming you knew a great secret, because you’d seen them playing, and wouldn’t tell us where?”

“I didn’t do that. DidI?”

“You have the same stiffness to your back! The same silly, smug face! It looks like you’re sucking on a talint coin. Does this act actually work on people?”

I looked her in the eye. “Can you help me speak to Velona Armenta, Fo?”

“That depends. Do you think doing this will help Castus?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

“I can’t tell you that.”

“Why not? And don’t say you can’tt—”

“I can’t tell you that, either.”

“Bastard. Utterbastard.”

“There are dangerous things at work here, Fo,” I said.

“You think I don’tknowthat?” she shot back. “I’ve lived in halls of grief for the past two years. I was there for Gevma’s funeral. And I’ve seen what Velona Armenta has done to herself.”

“What do you mean, done to herself?”

She hesitated. Then she looked over my shoulder and her expression grew grave. She burped, hiccupped, muttered, “Oh, fuck, here we go,” and wobbily stood.