Page 72 of A Trade of Blood

“Youapproveof my match with Ippeas?”

I grimaced as she stuffed more words in my mouth. “Well. Yes. I suppose I do.”

“Why? What’s changed?”

“Ippeas is…a very good sort,” I said reluctantly. “I mean, the fellow jumped into a burning house to save a kitchen maid! I don’t doubt he would have saved more if he could have.”

“Did he?” she said. “He didn’t tell me that! When did he do that?”

“Well, he would have told you if you hadn’t leapt at his throat. Though you were perfectly right to do so. His heart is true, if his reason isn’t always keen.”

“He’s clever in his own ways…though perhaps a bit too trusting. It’s up to us cynical Kols to muddy the morals of folk like that, I suppose.” Something in her jaw flexed. “And to keep him alive. I’ve never had so much wrath in my heart! These bastards poisoned my husband-to-be. I’ll do all I can to help you send them to the loop, no matter how dangerous! Come. The shrine’s just ahead.”

—

I surveyed the treesas we walked the path, but I saw no sign of any passage thereabout. I worried my sister had been mistaken, and perhaps the killer had never come to this place at all, yet the thought didn’t seem to enter her mind. “The shrine’s the deepest part,” she said simply. “And it’s just beyond.”

We walked on. Then we came to the glade, and I stopped short.

It was a large clearing, carefully formed amid the grasping, white-boled trees. In its center stood a structure wrought of fretvine, high and arched and clearly grown to grant shelter to the enormous stone figure standing beneath its eaves. Mai-lamps hung from the corners of the woven roof, casting the clearing with a flickering blue light. Between this and the purpled sunlight dappling our shoulders, there was a sense of the ethereal hanging about us, as if we’d walked out of one reality and into another.

Yet it was the statue in the structure that caught the eye the most. It was a stone figure of a person, rising eighteen span high, or aboutthree times the height of an average man. The figure was tall and thin and arrayed in great robes, but many of its features had been worn away by age: here, the hint of a chained bracelet; there, some faded insignia on a belt. The figure appeared to be extending their hands to offer something—achalice, I thought, wide and rounded—yet their fingers were unnaturally long, like they had more than three knuckles apiece. An unsettling feature, really.

I stepped closer to peer up at the stone figure, my nose still buried in the mint kerchief. Its facial features had faded as well—the eyes were no more than gentle indentations now—but the shaping of the head was curious: the cheeks were very narrow, the mouth quite wide, and the skull was elongated about the top, rising to a high, rounded point. The mouth was also open, as if frozen in speech, but the teeth and lips had surrendered to the elements long ago.

Yet despite the alien likeness of the statue, it was clearly beloved and adored by the folk of this place, for they’d left offerings about its feet: coins, and ribbons, and urns, and more. Many were adorned with a familiar symbol: the two spheres, separated by a vertical line.

“Master Gaddar,” whispered Fotia beside me. “One of the greatest of the Daljen. Or so they say.”

“They say? They don’t know?”

“Well, it’s not like the Daljen put up a sign here before they vanished hundreds of years ago. There’s only stories now. Myths of Master Gaddar granting a balm to his people, who drank from his cup and were filled with holy light. And he sang, too—see his mouth? They said Gaddar could sing a song that would make all the hinds come from the wood and behold him. There’s talk that some can even hear the statue singing now, at night.”

I looked at her.

“That’s what they say!” she said defensively.

“Why does his head look so…”

“Distorted? Not sure. But most of the Daljen statues have such a likeness. We know the Khanum were grand and strange, but…perhaps we don’t quite rememberhowgrand and strange, for few images of them still exist, yes? Yet in most of the recent art, the Daljen arerendered much more, ah—conventional, I should say. Easier to worship, and love, I suppose.”

I gazed around the clearing. The forest floor here was blank and lifeless, I noted. The earth was perfectly barren, and terribly smooth. Not a single tree or blade of grass sprouted.

“How was this place made?” I asked. “And the path leading to it?”

“The Apoths. The Orbiis disliked them doing this tremendously—they prefer that everyone keep out of the forest because of…well, what everyone thinks is at its center.”

“The tomb of the Daljen.”

“Yes. But the high families used their influence decades ago and had the Apoths carve paths to some of the statues. They used some kind of reagent to treat the soil, render it infertile. Gaddar’s is one of the easiest to access, really.”

I gazed back at Gaddar, my mind filled with thoughts of paths through the trees, and flashing lights in the leaves, and lost shines, and the words—Calm, calm.

Then it happened again.

Something shifted in my memories. Trembled. Reacted.

A voice whispered in me:I know that face.