Page 44 of A Trade of Blood

“N-no…?”

“Then you are just as bewildered as we are now. Tell me—do the medikkers make any progress in granting Velona heirs?”

“Not yet,” sighed Fotia. “I’m told the process takes years, and she started this but months ago.”

“And what of the male seed?” asked Ana. “For last I checked, it takes two to engender children…”

Fotia wrinkled her nose. “Yes…the service that employs Osumlik is quite established, and much used by the gentry. I am told they have…donationsfrom houses abroad. To ensure that the children are born of the proper class, and race, and with the appropriate suffusions…”

“Like picking a child out of a shop window,” said Ana, bemused. “How grotesque!”

“Velona’s impulse isn’t nearly so shallow,” said Fotia. “She is desperate.” She sighed. “I…I wish you could have seen her before. She was a bold thing and rode well. She preferred to be abroad, with the other drovers and herds. Now she has all the windows covered. Can’t bear to look out and see open hills anymore—for she’ll never ride a destrier again, and for an Armenta, that’s akin to death.”

“She does this out of despair or delirium, then,” I said.

“No,” said Fotia. “I think it’s duty. Madam Velona’s sworn to her house, and all its customs, going back centuries. Now she must contort herself to ensure it persists.”

“She chooses to change her very body in order to keep all things precisely the same,” mused Ana. “How very imperial of her.”

—

As we rodeback to Lacanthim, Ana sat bent in the corner of the carriage, muttering to herself like a person unhinged. Finally she snapped her fingers and said, “Give me the visual element, Din! How they looked, what they did, all of it. And quick. Especially about the instrument they played back there!”

I sniffed my vial and did so, chanting as we rode. I did not love this task: it was a haunting thing to dwell so much on the sight of Velona Armenta, so swollen yet withered, and her eyes so full of madness.

When I finished, Ana sat up, sniffed, and said, “I am loathsomely irked by this. The pipe for the web is very much like my bocal shawm, by your telling of it—and thus, we only happened to confirm the presence of the fungus in that dead girl by sheer luck! And I so veryhateluck, boy. I will not leave my goddamn investigations to the obscure will of the fates! Though at least we make some headway now.”

“Do we, ma’am? Nothing that Velona said makes me think the Armentas perished from the web—at least, nothing concrete, for no death was similar to the other. Not all perished of apparent suicide, and not all of them were tormented in their last days.”

“How rewarding it is to see that you still need me! For thereisa commonality, one established with thefourthArmenta poisoning—Castus himself! Did you miss it, boy? Didn’t he, too, mentiondreamsto you?”

My eyes shuddered in my skull, and I recalled his words:I’ve worked in the flensing halls of my family…I’ve butchered the corpses of many cows and worked there so often, I’ve even dreamed of being trappedin that place. But in that moment, Iudex, it was like I was back in those halls, yet a shadow version of them…

“Dreams,” I said quietly. “And a specific dream, at that.”

“Yes. Dreams of being trapped within alocation! That’s three out of four of the Armenta children, with Lyimo being the sole exception. So I am given to wonder—are these nightmares a symptom of the guiding web? A sign of itsconditioning? Let’s pray the fine officers of the Orbiis can offer more guidance—followed by the use of their knives upon Zansay’s corpse!”

Chapter 13

Though Velona Armenta had spokenromantically of the pastures and hills of the canton of Sapirdad, as I rode the tired nag I’d rented to trail the Orbiis, I decided it was the most monotonous, featureless country I’d ever passed through. The land was flat, dusty, and filled up with bean crops. It was like a landscape painted by an artist running out of paints and simply trying to makedo.

Seriv’s men had indicated that the Orbiis were surveying the Burav fields to the southwest. Each field was demarcated by a row of tall spindle-trees planted to prevent soil erosion from the wind, but they made it impossible to use my spyglass to see far ahead. I was forced instead to trot through empty field after empty field, with naught but the beans to lookat.

Then I passed through one wall of spindle-trees, heard the clatter of hooves and cart and the chiming of reins, and looked to my left.

An ornately decorated cart was trundling toward me along the edge of the field, sporting three high pennants, all striped with crimson and purple. The cart was followed by nearly a dozen people in capes and coats sporting a similar pattern. As they walked, they snipped off pieces of the tree leaves and the crops and stowed them away in a pot at their side as they walked. Though this was strange, what sat in the middle of the cart was even stranger: it appeared to be some kind of throne, with a feathery, delicate, pale tree growing from its back, and a figure slouching in the seat beforeit.

I gazed at the figure. They, too, were draped in fabric striped with purple and crimson—the colors of the Imperial Engineers and Apoths, I realized, but mixed—yet they had a mask affixed to the bottom half of their face, covering their nose and mouth, with algaeoil tubes coiling down to a set of dark red casks beside the throne. The figure was sitting in a position of profound boredom, one masked cheek resting on their hand, eyes staring idly out over the endless fields of crops. Whether they were male or female, I could not tell: they were slender and pale, with bright, flaxen hair flowing down one shoulder to spill into their lap. Though I could glimpse no more than this—save perhaps a smooth, clear brow and a set of somber eyes—Ithought them very beautiful, even at this distance.

I studied the procession, taken aback. These were the Orbiis officers? This looked more like the ritualistic parades the Legion held before the wet season, to bless the warriors who’d hold the walls. Yet this was where Seriv had indicated they’d be, so it must have been them.

Now,I thought to myself,how to convince these people to return with me to Lacanthim to cut up a corpse?

I nudged my nag forward and called to them some fifty span out, announcing my presence. To my surprise, none of them responded. They just kept marching on, taking snippets of the leaves and spoonfuls of the soil.

“Hail there!” I called. “Hail! I am from the Iudex. I wish to speak to you.”

Yet they did not stop or even look. As I drew near I noticed many of them wore masks, just like the fellow on the cart: not warding helms, but some kind of breathing apparatus that covered only their noses and mouths and were then connected by algaeoil tubes to glass percolation pots at their sides. They churned little handles set in the pots to stir the contents as they walked, like pipe-players in a corner band.