Page 98 of A Trade of Blood

“I am indifferent!” snarled Ana. “We have a goddamn murder suspect with a body count in the teens who has fled this morning, and this woman is the only person who might know where the littlefucker is! If you do not resurrect her, I shall sit astride her chest and slap her awake!”

The medikker pouted. “Oh, well, that would not work…” He saw Ana’s face. “But fine, fine! Though I wish it recorded that I do this with protest!”

The medikker took a small vial of tincture from his supplies and added three crimson drops to the tank with the crustacean. Within minutes, Miss Istelia moaned, then groaned, and then began turning about as if terribly pained.

Ana snapped her fingers before the woman’s face. “Wake up!” she said. “Speak!”

Istelia cracked her eyes and groaned again at the sight of daylight. Then, with much smacking of her lips, she turned her head from side to side to take in her surroundings. “Where…am I?” she croaked.

“Nearly the same place you were!” thundered Ana. “In the halls of the Buravs! But almost all of it is fucking burned to bits, no thanks to you!”

“Not so loud!” Istelia moaned. “Oh, not so loud, please, please!”

“Oh, fine!” huffed Ana. “I shall whisper if necessary. Though what I whisper shall likely be just as dreadful as the timbre of my voice.” She leaned forward. “For you are out of a job, miss.Allthe Buravs, young to old, are either dead or missing. And I suspect that it has something to do with you, or whatever you were wrapped up in.”

Istelia stared at Ana in horror. She blinked several times. Then, with another moan, her eyes rolled back into her head, and she fainted straightaway.

We studied her, once more lying unconscious on the ground.

Tauri sighed. “Well, that didn’t go splendidly, did it, chaps.”

“Yes,” said Seriv. “Better give her a moment and then dose her again. This time—perhaps let Kol here do the questioning? He is a somewhat gentler hand, I suspect.”

—

“They…are all dead?”Madi Istelia asked me weakly. “Allof them?”

I studied her as she leaned against a blackened fretvine post. The medikkers had brewed up some draught and poured it into a teacup, and she sipped it slowly. It granted a sense of the surreal to the whole ordeal, this terrified, wine-soaked woman sipping tea in these burned ruins as if at a garden party.

Given her state of dehydration, it was difficult to tell Istelia’s age, but she looked to be in her fifties, with enough lines about her mouth to indicate an upper lip that was kept perpetually stiffened. Yet despite her panic, pain, and despair, there was something circumspect to her eyes: she looked at me rarely, as if worried what I might spy within her gaze.

“All, I am afraid, ma’am,” I said gently to her. “Save Jalin. But we do not know his whereabouts. It’s all a great tragedy. And we still do not understand how it started.”

Istelia was silent for a long time, lips pursed above the teacup. Then, very carefully and quietly: “What happened to Jalin? What was the manner of his leaving?”

“He fled, ma’am, in the night. Just last night, in fact, though he was terribly burned. It must have pained him greatly to move.”

Istelia blinked rapidly. I could tell it was coming now. I waited.

“Did he say anything? Before he left?”

“A little, ma’am. He told us he tried to save them. But—he told us he had tried to save themmanytimes. I found that strange.”

Istelia shut her eyes. Her mouth worked for a moment.

“What did he mean when he said that, ma’am?” I asked. “What was he trying to save his family from?”

“Oh,” she said absently. “Oh, from damnation, of course. From the poisons of this place.”

Again, I waited.

“He was never made for this world, you know,” said Istelia. “Of cattle, and bones, and flesh. Even as an infant, he was such a…adelicatething. Nursed very poorly. But when he grew, he was…oh. He was such a pretty little creature.”

“You knew him as a child?”

“Oh, yes. I’ve served here for time out of mind. Almost enough toget used to it—almost.” She gazed off into the devastation. “I told myself that Master Burilis came up in a hard age. His family had lost much, then won it all back. Perhaps that was why he was so intent on toughening up his son. Or…I told myself that. I told myself that when he locked Jalin away to rid him of his fears of the dark. And when he made him sleep by himself in the cottage when he feared being alone.”

“Or when he made him work in the flensing halls?”