Page 103 of A Trade of Blood

“Jalin,” said Fotia softly. “By hell, I can’tbelieveit, Din.”

“You can’t share this, of course,” I said. “Partially because it’s speculation. But more…”

“I’ve no wish to talk of this with anyone. It’s all so dreadful. And dreadfully familiar, now.”

I cocked an eyebrow at her.

“Ippeas is…in a bad state,” she explained. “His spirits are abysmal. His cousins are dead. Hell, some were turned to abominations. He asked me just today—what is the worth of all this suffering? Why toil for such luxuries if it does this to you?”

“He’s still not conditioned, true? Is his sleep interrupted?”

“He hasn’t slept at all since Castus. So we don’t know. Yet what an awful thing it is to hear you speak of Jalin Burav and all his despair, and hear an echo of that in Ip.” She turned about, gazing at the shopfronts. “When I first came here, I thought I was escaping. Breaking out of how things used to be in Daretana. Finding a new, wondrous place to make my own. Yet it’s still all the same here, if not worse. Families putting their children through such misery, and for what? To wind up like Velona, locked up in Aimafall, alone and muttering?”

“Do you wish to leave? To do something new?”

“How can I? And is escape even possible? I thought you were escaping, too, but…look at you.”

“I never felt like it was escape.”

“No?”

“No. To me, it was always…sacrifice. A calf, arrayed with herbs and sacred paints, and led to the dais.”

Fotia made a quiet, strangled sound of sorrow.

“A poor metaphor,” I said. “But I was wrong.” I tried to marshal my thoughts. “It’s a strange thing to have a duty, Fo. I see the drovers and think myself like them. So much work, to fulfill a need—and blood spilled, and hard choices made. But what I do isn’t the same. Perhaps it’s the difference between feeding and nourishing. To try to better the hungry, and help them grow, as opposed to simply satisfy.” I rubbed my temple. “Even if it has made me very different. So much so I feel I am a different breed of creature altogether.”

“This is what your Dolabra teaches you?”

“In a cruel, jaded way, yes.”

She was silent for a long while. Then she said, “Have you noticed, brother, that we both escaped home and Grandmother in our own ways, and found ourselves in service to new old women who are both more than a little mad and cruel?”

I stiffened, for I had not realized that at all.

“Yes,” said Fotia. “If you’d asked me yesterday, I’d have said I had found the better patron. Now, though, I don’t think that’s so.” She took my face then and kissed my brow. “You’ll be careful in the wood tomorrow, true? I can’t lose you now, brother. Not after you’ve just come back.”

“I’ll walk carefully. I’ll have the Orbiis with me, and Commander Tauri.”

“But I don’t much like him at all. He has no love for me.”

“For your trade, you mean.”

“Maybe.” She tweaked my ear. “For you, maybe otherwise. I saw how he looked at you, after all. I’m a fool for what I do, Din, but I’m not a blind one.”

V

The Taste of the Knife

Chapter 27

Well before dawn I awoke,washed my face, and arrived at the Orbiis offices to find Tauri and his colleagues loading their cart once more. In the gray, predawn light, they had the look of pilgrims preparing for a mission. Yet one tool of theirs I recognized, and was greatly worried by: a set of wheellock bombards, loaded into the side of the cart.

I eyed these warily as I approached. These were small handheld cannons that were cumbersome to reload but could easily punch a hole in a destrier, or even an urhosi, I reckoned. They were one of the few armaments I had not taken care to train with yet.

“Why,” I said slowly, “are we taking those?”

“Because we don’t know what’s in there,” said Tauri’s voice. He emerged from behind the cart, arrayed not in his usual Orbiis cloak but a set of combat leathers of a like I hadn’t seen since the sea walls. “I would not worry too much, chap. It’s protocol. We take them when we check the Touched Site, as well as short swords—but hopefully we won’t be going there. Of course, if your immunis hasn’t succeeded in making a map, we’ll be going nowhere at all!”