Page 11 of A Trade of Blood

I went back to the shutters, opened them to permit in more light, and returned to look again.

I peered at her shoulder and spied gentle grooves in the darkening flesh there. A serrated blade, then. Teeth about an eighth of a smallspan apart.

My eyes shook in my skull now, and I recalled our briefing: a knife had been found and secured by the custodi after they’d arrived on the scene. I made a note to ask on this.

Yet the wounds seemed a strange thing to me. If someone wished to kill a person with a long knife, a simple stab would do. These wounds were different: ritualistic and careful, with a great amount of sawing. It suggested some intent beyond death.

I moved on to her hand—or the one I could access, as her left arm lay down in the blood. I saw no cuts upon her right hand, nor any bruises. The knuckles were tiny, perfect pearls, a hand that had known neither labor nor violence.

I grunted, surprised, and again studied the wounds on her torso. The cuts were so terriblyprecise,even at the end. And this should not have been so: while the start of such a wound was often relatively clean, it always grew ragged and uneven as the victim struggled in pain.

Yet there was no sign of struggle on young Zansay. No lacerations on the palms, or bruised fingers. Not even a cracked nail.

I fished her left hand out of the blood to study it, then paused.

“Hum,” I said softly.

Though her left arm lay in the blood, the hand had been turned up, away from its slick surface—and though the interior of herforearm was mostly clean of blood, the entirety of her left palm was red. It was like she’d pressed it securely against the bloodied floor.

I knelt lower, peering at the body, and saw another stain I could not comprehend: an oblong, rounded blot upon the front of her left knee, as if she’d also pressed her kneecap against the bloodied floor before submitting to death.

I studied the blood about me, hoping to find some explanation there. The majority of it had come from the wound in her stomach, of course, where she’d been nearly disemboweled. And yet the blood was so evenly distributed: it lay nearly entirely toward the back half of the room, and not at all at the front. It was as if she’d simply stood here and bled. More so, there was no sign of violence to the room: no errant smear of blood, or evidence of a struggle, or grappling, or of any attempt to make her submit.

Another trembling in my head. The chambers of my mind pulsed and flexed, like the airs of a passageway shifting as a far door is opened on a windy morn.

The voice returned, whispering—Yes. This.

“Stop,” I said and pushed on my temple.

The voice departed, but slowly. I felt as if a presence was still in the room, lurking behind the bottle of wine or the window shutter.

“Am I going mad?” I whispered aloud, as if wishing to make sure my ears still functioned aright.

Nearly all engravers eventually went mad, of course—though I’d been assured such a fate was many years off.

A quirk,I told myself.Happenstance. You’ve a task todo.

I shook myself, then moved the girl’s trunk to one of the bloodless corners of the room and opened it. Within were clothes, and perfumed gels, and a few paints for her face—and the sheath of a knife, about a full span long, made of old, well-worn leather.

I turned the sheath over in my hand, puzzled. Had this held the knife that had killed Zansay? I did not know, for the custodi had taken the murder weapon, I’d been told. A strange thing to find here, either way. I replaced the sheath but made a note ofit.

Lastly, I checked the bed. Almost instantly, I spied waxy, crackling streaks on the sheets. I could have sniffed the bed to confirm my suspicions but did not need to: I knew the sight of a man’s spendings well enough. There’d been a great deal of coupling in this bed, most of it recent.

I returned to the closet and opened the door. Ana grinned up at me like a ghoul emerging from a tomb. “Well, Din? What say you? Is it as straightforward as all claim?”

“I am unsure, ma’am,” I said slowly. “For I’ve no idea what I’m looking at.”

“Ohh? Might this tawdry shit have a faint whiff of something fascinating? Let us see! Spill your observations to me, boy.”

—

I spoke then,sniffing my vial and allowing my memories to come pouring out of my mouth. My eyes quaked and trembled as I did so, and it felt as if I occupied a hundred different places within the room at the same time, peering at everything from every aspect and trying to describe it at once.

And yet the voice—whatever it was—did not speak. For that, I was quite grateful.

When I was finished I took a sip from my waterskin and watched Ana sit there, nodding.

“So,” she said softly. “So, so, so. Again, the innkeeper claimed she did not hear Zansay Burav scream atallduring this grievous wounding, correct?”