Page 94 of A Trade of Blood

“We have a body that is three years old,” I said. “On it, we have a laceration thatmightbe from a ring, and a bruise thatmightbe from a knuckle. The ring in question could have been worn by an entire gentry family. In our few days here, true, we have only ever seen Jalin Burav wearing it. Yet the murder took place three years ago. That’s a lot of time for folk to wear lots of different jewelry, ma’am. And while Jalin has vanished, we can’t yet say with certainty why. He might have been worried for his life—which could be very understandable.” I cleared my throat, awaiting her fury. “I just…feel it is all soft, ma’am. None of this would pass before a magistrate.”

“Very true, Din! I appreciate your principled resistance. You are correct. Thereismuch we don’t know about our dear vanished Jalin Burav. We do have some testimony that he had reason to kill Lyimo Armenta specifically—but we’ve nothing that could explain why Jalin would kill any of the other Armenta children. It is, as you say, very soft indeed. Yet I have done myownprobing!” she sang. She raised the book in her lap and massaged it with her fingers:Scriptures of the Daljen Dynasty.

“Where did you get that, ma’am?” I asked.

“The porter here. The boy is a fervent Daljenist. He was most eager to share his ridiculous tomes with me. Idiot thinks I’m near conversion. Wants to take me to temple tomorrow.”

“You claim you’ve found something in them—yet also deem them ridiculous?”

“Oh, of course. Most of these parables are utter rot. Irredeemable drivel! And yet, much like the soup I supped upon the other day…occasionally, there is a nugget in the gristle. This particular nugget wasterrificallyobvious, once I realized what it was.” She leaned forward. I expected her to grin and leer as she so often did when close to revelation, but she did not. All I beheld in her snowy-white face was dismay. “It filled me with delight—and then apprehension. Forthough we seek killers, I cannot help but feel there are worse secrets buried in these pastures. I am, as you are well aware, Din, something of an ardent consumer of flesh. Yet now I am confronted with how monstrously inefficient it all is. So much treasure, all for a little blood!”

“Without it, though,” I said, “the Empire would never have flourished—or so many would say, ma’am.”

“They wouldsay,true! But there are far more efficient ways of producing proteins and sustenance. It is perhaps just as Trikao Armenta said—flesh is the fare of kings and conquerors, and all citizens aspire to such gaudy luxury.” A vicious scowl stole across her face. “Perhaps we have fashioned an Empire that prefers lavishness to decency. It makes me wonder—is such a people worth maintaining? For a willingness to tolerate suffering for one’s comfort only grows over time, in my experience. In fact, the more I read, the more I suspect, Din…perhaps we now echo an older age of the Empire. One that failed—perhaps deservedly.”

I studied her, unnerved. Whenever Ana had spoken of protecting the Empire before, she had always listed the many unsatisfying compromises one had to make to keep it all upright—but she had never suggested that it might be better to send it all tumbling down.

“What have you found in those books, ma’am?” I asked.

“Mm? Ohh. Much.” She took a breath, sat up, and attempted a smile. “I have found the combination to unlock Burav’s vault, Din. And in that, I have discovered concrete evidence of Jalin’s guilt.”

—

Another carriage ride,my fifth of the day. My back ached from the jostling, and the nerves within my neck yowled and complained, but I quieted the discomfort and leaned out the window, peering ahead as we approached our destination.

I had expected to return to the ruins of the Burav estate to find it still little more than charred wood and crumbling fretvine leaning against one another. Yet the Orbiis had been busy in the time I’d been away and had cleared away a great deal of the debris. It looked lesslike a house disassembled and more like one in construction: something in the way the stone foundation had been cleared, and all the wood so clean and stripped.

Except, of course, for the huge, blocky, glimmering form of the vault sitting in the eastern end.

I ducked back into the carriage. “What if, ma’am, you try out your combination, and it doesn’t work?”

“Well,” said Ana from the shadows, “then I will look like a right fucking idiot, true? A very good thing, then, that I amcorrect.As to what we find within…I’ve no idea whatsoever.”

“I feel you’re lying to me again, ma’am.”

“Am I?” she said, feigning offense.

“I think you know full well what’s in there.”

“I think I knowgeneralities.I do not claim to know specifics. And when you don’t know specifics, you keep your goddamn mouth shut. Just as you ought to keep your mouth shut about my intentions, boy.”

The carriage came to a stop, and the Orbiis watched as I opened the door and led Ana through the skeletal walls of the estate. Commander Tauri awaited us before the gleaming steel door of the vault. A few sections of plating had been removed about them, mostly revealing more steel plating, yet here and there I glimpsed hints of interior machinery more complex than any clock. The four tumblers glittered like black gemstones on the face of the door, arranged in the pattern of a diamond. I could see that the Orbiis had made great efforts to remove the plating around these as well but had had little success.

“So,” Tauri said. “I thought you professed to hate riddles, Dolabra. And yet you come here now, claiming to have solved this one.” Unless I was mistaken, his eyes bore a bit of redness—perhaps a residue from a puff of urlev earlier that day.

“I do hate riddles, sir!” Ana said. “But I must confess—Ididn’t solve this one.”

“No?”

“No!” she chirped. “I realized someoneelsehad solved it longbefore I did. It was merely a matter of realizing they had done so, and what their likely answer was.”

Tauri looked at me, one eyebrow raised. I shrugged.

“Before I open this great big fucker, sir,” said Ana idly, “I would request an update from you. For once that door shifts, I am sure my attentions will be absorbed by what’s within.”

Tauri pushed a sheet of blond hair out of his eyes. “I presume you’d like to know about the trackers I’d called in, and their hunt for Jalin Burav.”

“It would be a kindness, yes.”