Page 2 of A Trade of Blood

“Correct!” she cried. “Not interesting,not at all! If you have a dead girl, odds are you will find a very stupid boy on the other end of the knife. And that they have, in fact! Got the little fucker locked up and all! We need hardly attend this for a minute!”

At that, my eyes shivered in my skull, and I summoned up my memories of our briefing orders.

As an imperial engraver, I had been augmented to possess a perfect memory and could summon nearly any experience from the depths of my mind. Our orders had been so stark and perturbing, however, that I hardly needed to use my talents at all to recall them.

Phrases from our orders leapt out to me. Some choice excerpts included “profound social strife throughout the region,” “hyperinflation of costs of key imperial goods likely,” and—most noteworthy—“potential casualties quite high.”

I released my memories and returned to the moment.

“We attend this, ma’am,” I said, “because the murder suspect is ofanothergentryclan. The two families are now on the verge of outright war. One death may become dozens, if not hundreds.”

“But none would be interesting!” she said. “Not a one, not at all! They can gut each other in the goddamn streets, for all I care!” With that, she crossed her arms and continued muttering.

—

After enduring anotherhour of Ana’s fuming, I climbed out of the carriage to join the pilot atop his perch. Though it’d grant me little sleep, the sound of the horses’ hooves was at least less caustic.

I sat blinking sleepily as we trundled through the leagues of bean fields. The horizon was flat, green, and endless, with nary a tree in sight. The sight somehow defied the eye. It was as if the whole of the canton of Sapirdad had been transformed, every scrap of soil and nutrients redirected toward the cultivation of beans. An odd sight, to me: I had grown up on these very plains—though on the other, less wealthy side of the Empire’s third-ring wall, of course—but the total defoliation of this landscape made it entirely alien.

We turned off the Great Spoke Road and started toward the city of Lacanthim, and the way ahead filled with carriages, carts, and riders. I’d expected to see cattle on the roads—these lands were famous for their prized urhosi cows, which were often as big as a house—but though many of the carts were ferrying livestock, they were certainly not cows. Rather, each one was piled high with cages containing small, unsightly creatures of a like I’d never seen before.

I wrinkled my nose as one particularly full cage passed us. The beasts within were not cats, precisely, or squirrels or weasels, but something in between. They were small, furred, greenish-yellow things, each about the length of a man’s arm, with a ringed tail, small black eyes, rounded ears, and—most noticeably—long, prehensile fingers and thumbs on their front legs. They almost had the look of human hands, yet leathery and distorted. I watched one tapping its long digits along its cage and felt distinctly revolted.

“Arethose,” I said aloud, “the…”

Our carriage pilot laughed. “Yes, sir. The famous cats. Though here they’re more famed for their odors.”

I gazed at one cart full of cages as it shrank into the distance. So those had been the drokha-cats of the Empire’s third ring, released into the fields at night to pick the crops so the laborers would find bushels brimming in the morning. I guessed that their humanlike hands had been why they’d been chosen for such duties.

My mouth twisted. “Those little beasts are the ones that handleallthe harvest?”

“Yes, sir. Nearly every third bite you eat probably passed through their fingers.”

“I suppose it’s not wise,” I remarked, “to learn too much of where your meals come from.”

He glanced at me. “If the cats bother you, sir, I’d stay clear of the flensing halls. Those’d likely turn your gut a mite more.”

I opened my mouth to ask, then thought better of it. As pastoral as the farmlands of the third ring might appear, already I felt they were as strange as all the rest of the Empire.

Soon the traffic on the road backed up, blockaded by some obstruction ahead. I couldn’t see any hint of it this far back from town: all I could spy were dozens of cages full of cats screeching and hopping about, which caused the horses to whicker nervously.

“Any idea what’s blocking the road?” I asked.

“No, sir. Never seen it like this, sir.”

I shot a sour glance at the line of carts ahead and climbed back down to speak to Ana.

“Road’s blocked up, ma’am,” I said as I slipped inside.

“So I gathered!” Ana snapped. “I am not a goddamned imbecile, boy! What is the damned issue?”

“Don’t know, ma’am,” I said. “But our orders were to be at the inn in town by midday.”

“Oh, hell,” she muttered. “Am I truly about to force us tospeedto this miserable task?” She waved a hand at the ceiling. “Tell the child up there to cut across country.”

“We are, ah, surrounded by croplands.”

“And?”